Shawn Johnson and Andrew East Reveal 1 Ritual They Followed to ‘Protect’ Marriage While Expecting First Baby (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Shawn Johnson and Andrew East have partnered with Hatch to launch a new nightly series, Date Night

• The five-minute episodes are meant for couples looking to maintain their intimacy at home and create meaningful memories with regularity

• The married athlete tells PEOPLE that they were drawn to the project since it reflects the type of quality time they spend together as busy parents of three

Shawn Johnson and Andrew East are giving couples a new way to make memories out of the little things and find meaning in routine.

The athletes regularly get candid on their co-hosted podcast Couple Things, where they chat about the realities of married life, parenting and personal values. With their latest endeavor, the pair has tapped their relationship know-how to help create something interactive for partners looking to better connect.

The Olympic gymnast, 33, and former NFL player, 34, are the hosts of Hatch‘s new audio series, Date Night. The five-minute episodes are meant to be played before couples go to sleep, and each one provides a variety of games, trivia and guided meditations. The duo tells PEOPLE that each bite-sized segment can function as an intimate alternative to solo evening routines.

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“It seems like people’s tendencies before they go to bed is just to scroll or look at their phone or send off last messages or whatever it is,” says Johnson. “I think Hatch did the most perfect job in the scripting of consolidating … relational connection in such a small amount of time. Even while we were filming them, we were giggling so hard.”

She notes that the series has even helped them at unexpected moments, like when she and East were recording the episode right after having an argument. “Within the five-minute script, we were reconnected again, so it was actually a social experiment that worked,” she notes.

East and Johnson jumped at the opportunity to develop Date Night with Hatch because, in many ways, it played into a ritual they were already practicing on their own. While they were expecting their first baby, now-5-year-old daughter Drew, they decided to come up with a way to maintain their connection.

“We were really nervous about the dynamics shifting in our marriage, and we were like, ‘How can we protect that?'” Johnson tells PEOPLE. “So we put on the calendar a date night once a week, every week, and it’s kind of like a non-negotiable, just a place to reconnect and kind of get off your phones and all of these ideas.”

Eventually, they realized the weekly basis didn’t provide them with enough quality time, and they eventually decided to make those shared moments even more frequent.

“We started doing these kind of daily checks,” says East. “We would sit down and do a daily debrief called ‘Bev Time.’ And we just realized that that actually had a massively positive impact on our marriage.”

East and Johnson have established themselves as trustworthy sources for tactics to strengthen relationships, and part of their reliability comes from their willingness to admit when things haven’t worked as well.

For example, in one episode of Couple Things from April 2024, they opened up about a time when they “were having a really hard time postpartum, trying to understand each other, trying to figure out why we weren’t connecting well,” as Johnson explained on the podcast.

Vulnerability seems to come naturally to the podcasters — who are parents to sons Jett, 4, and Barrett, 1, in addition to eldest Drew — but they aren’t afraid to set sound boundaries. Johnson notes that they didn’t post about the aforementioned postpartum period as they were actually experiencing it.

“We were in the thick of it. I think I was dealing with postpartum depression, we were having a hard time connecting as a husband and wife. Bear had some complications I couldn’t figure out,” she tells PEOPLE. “We worked really, really hard in that phase. We weren’t on social media a lot. We were trying to figure it out, we were trying to learn it.”

As collaborators and life partners, they have a “very strict rule” about not posting “anything that isn’t resolved,” says Johnson. “Once we got past it and we felt like we were in the clear and strong again, that’s when we said, ‘I think I feel okay talking about it because it is something a lot of people go through and struggle with.'”

They’ve seen the impact of their honesty and relatability, and it motivates them to keep opening up once they’ve processed and resolved each hurdle.

“We try to experience something, kind of work through it behind the scenes by ourselves and then share what we’ve learned with people,” says East. “We’re not doing anything except starting conversations that then allows other people to participate in.”

Read the original article on People