RHOSLC’s Jen Shah and her husband Coach Sharrieff Shah have been married for 27 years. They’ve endured some rough roads together, especially recently with Jen’s fraud charges, but the couple is still together.
How did Jen and Sharrieff meet?
The pair met back in college, and have been together ever since. It all started when Sharrieff felt awestruck by Jen. “I saw her, my heart stops immediately,” he recalled in Season 1, Episode 1 of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. He walked up to her and asked if the seat beside her was taken.
According to him, she sassily replied “there’s nobody there, I guess not.”
Jen was raised Mormon, but Sharrieff was Muslim. Five years into their marriage, Jen suggested that Sharrieff might want to consider converting to Mormonism. Sharieff refused because the Mormon church had only recently started accepting black people. This made Jen think twice about her own religion, and she decided to convert to Islam.
For over 10 years Sharrieff has been a football coach at the University of Utah (the “Utes,”) which gobbles up most of his time. Jen has expressed frustration in her marriage because of Sharrieff’s absence and was very hurt when he did not attend her father’s funeral a few years ago.
In 2020 their marriage almost ended over Jen’s anger issues.
“Six months ago, Sharrieff and I almost got a divorce,” Jen said to Lisa Barlow in the first episode of Season 2. “Lisa, I thought my life was, like, over.” She revealed that her constant behavior of lashing out had become too much for Sharrieff.
“Sharrieff felt like he wasn’t being a positive influence in my life, like he couldn’t help me,” she continued.
The couple has sought marriage counseling, and Sharrieff is remaining by Jen’s side as she awaits trial for one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
This legal trouble has caused the couple to grow closer than ever, Jen revealed in a September 2021 interview with Bravo’s Spilling Tea.
“Coach Shah and I have had our ups and downs through our marriage and when I thought he cared more about this than me, whatever, now what we’ve gone through there’s no question in my mind Coach Shah loves me more than anybody or anything in the world and he’s just been so, so supportive of me.”
