Egypt Sherrod & Mike Jackson Say HGTV Didn’t Show the Struggles of Their Marriage

For Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson, the way their relationship was portrayed on HGTV wasn’t always accurate to how it was off-screen.

The couple got candid about their relationship ups and downs on a recent episode of The Deep End podcast. Sherrod explained that HGTV fans never got a full picture of their marriage from their various on-screen appearances.

“People look at us, and they would watch us on TV and put us on this pedestal as if [we] are the perfect couple, the perfect marriage,” she stated. “There is nothing perfect over here. We’re just two very imperfect people who love one another and our family, have prioritized that, and pray every day that God keeps us together.”

Jackson added, “Two imperfect people that continue to choose each other.”

Sherrod and Jackson have been married since 2010. The pair share two daughters, Kendall and Harper, and Sherrod is the stepmother of Jackson’s eldest daughter, Simone, whom he welcomed during a previous relationship. Sherrod made her HGTV debut as the host of Property Virgins, and went on to host Flipping Virgins before her and Jackson’s renovation series, Married to Real Estate, premiered in 2022. (The show was canceled after four seasons last year.)

HGTV

“There was a point where the world [was] looking at us, like, ‘I want to be like Egypt and Mike. I love their marriage. They got it all. They got the business, the shows, the kids, the whole thing, the whole thing.’ And the cameras would go off, and we’re like, ‘[You] get on my nerves,'” Sherrod confessed. “You don’t see that part, but real people who really, like I said, lived in their skin know, ‘Oh, he said that on TV. She’s gonna get him afterward.'”

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She continued, “He would be sleeping on the couch, Lecrae. Or I’d be sleeping by myself for a week. That’s the truth. I can’t find him. Where is he at? He’s in the basement. He’s just anywhere but around me because I did something that I know I shouldn’t have done or said something I shouldn’t have said. The reality is that nobody is perfect.”

On the podcast, Sherrod said at one point, she and Jackson “had it all wrong” about handling their marriage struggles. “I don’t know how we stayed together 22 years. 22 years all wrong,” she quipped, while Jackson added, “We had a toolbox, and we were pulling out the wrench for things that needed a hammer.”

After years of Jackson letting Sherrod have the spotlight, Sherrod said they realized their dynamic wasn’t “healthy” for their relationship. “Inevitably, you’re putting bricks in your backpack. And then before you know it, you’re 15 years into a marriage, and you’re carrying a heavy backpack of resentment,” she explained. “Especially when you do TV shows together, you raise a family, we’ve got three girls, you got all these businesses, and you add all those pressures on.”

Sherrod noted, “Something’s gonna break, something’s gonna give. And yes, it broke for us. It broke, but it was necessary because we truly believe that God was like, ‘I put you two together, and I put you together for the long time, not for the meantime, which means that I intend for you to evolve, not stay the same.’ We both had to go inside and be honest, get rid of ego, dissolve it. It has no place in a marriage.”