Tragic Details About HGTV Couple Egypt Sherrod And Mike Jackson

Real estate broker Egypt Sherrod and construction builder Mike Jackson aren't afraid to get personal on their HGTV reality show, "Married to Real Estate," and they've maintained a strong marriage all through their success. With the power couple's real estate success, beautiful family, and sprawling home, it may appear as though their life is perfect. However, Sherrod and Jackson have experienced some life tragedies throughout their relationship, some of which began before they wed.

On a 2023 episode of the mental health podcast, "Girl Stop Playing," Sherrod revealed that when she and Jackson first started dating, she almost lost him as she was "mentally fighting and sparring thinking I had to protect myself and assets." These futile thoughts reared their head due to "baggage" from past relationships Sherrod had. She explained, "things that we do in our current relationships are a reflection of the past that we've been through and we got to let that baggage go so we can be fully here in the present and enjoy and allow ourselves to be loved."

According to the real estate broker in an episode of "Black Love" (via XONecole), it was actually Jackson who caused Sherrod to understand that her thoughts were detrimental to their relationship: "It wasn't until he called me out on my mess and told me, 'You are taking it out on me — everything from every other guy that did you wrong and you're gonna run Mr. Right off.'" Sherrod took the comments to heart, did some self-work, and let go of all she needed to, to allow her relationship with Jackson to prosper. That isn't the only difficult challenge they've faced, though. 

Mike Jackson and Egypt Sherrod have three children: Simone is from Jackson's first marriage and they had Kendall and Harper together. In 2023, Sherrod revealed on Instagram that their youngest daughter, Harper, had adenoid removal surgery after experiencing some difficulty breathing at night. 

In one of the post's videos, Sherrod and Jackson can be seen giving their undivided attention to Harper during the hospital visit, and in one case after the surgery, the young girl was embraced and swayed back and forth by her mother who sported a simultaneously relieved and tense face. In the post's caption, Sherrod provided clarity on the situation, explaining: "Harper has been having trouble breathing at night and Mike and I have been taking turns holding her while sleeping in a chair so she can be upright and get air. It's been going on for 3 months." The couple considered it a blessing that Harper was able to have her adenoids successfully removed.

That day, Sherrod dubbed Harper her "shero." The family was flooded with support in the post's comments, including from other HGTV and Bravo reality stars.

Egypt Sherrod did an exclusive interview with Essence in 2020 in which she shared the difficulties she had conceiving her two birth daughters, Kendall and Harper. With her first pregnancy with Kendall, the issues began in the third trimester, which caused the baby to come earlier than anticipated in January 2012, she explained. "I had preeclampsia and horrible edema that was spreading," Sherrod told the media outlet. After this pregnancy, she struggled for years to become pregnant again and even scheduled a hysterectomy in December 2018 after thinking she would not conceive again.

Before the hysterectomy could take place, Sherrod found out she was pregnant. Sherrod delivered Harper in February 2019 via C-section, but Egypt found herself back in the hospital just days later. "What was scary is I was checked out of the hospital two days after giving birth, and when I got back home and laid down to go to sleep, it felt like I was drowning. I couldn't breathe," the real estate broker and designer told Essence.

Thankfully, her husband, Mike Jackson, was able to take her to the hospital where the doctors explained that the c-section caused fluid to get into her lungs. In a separate interview with People, Sherrod explained, "When I was lying back to go to sleep, I was essentially drowning in this fluid and that was the pressure that I was feeling." Sherrod was unaware this could occur as she was not advised by the hospital and apparently could have died if she remained home a day longer.

One Sunday in 2022 while at a gas station in Kennesaw, Georgia, HGTV's Egypt Sherrod shared a video to Instagram where she said she noticed a man place a piece of tissue on a gas pump, then return to his car. "I'm out getting a tank of gas and I watched a man put this on a gas handle and I just had to run over to tell the little girl not to touch it," Sherrod said in the now-deleted video (via Black Enterprise). "I watched him do this." She said she called the police to report the incident and then warned her followers to never touch tissues in gas pumps.

While many of Sherrod's followers thanked her for the warning and applauded her for sharing the story, some people believed the entire thing was made up. Another Black Enterprise article reported that a blogger tried to frame Sherrod's heroism as a hoax, stating that the reality star did not call the police. Sherrod did not take these allegations lightly and returned to social media to "fact check the fact checker."

Sherrod declared that kidnapping and trafficking are not hoaxes, and skepticism only offends victims and families who do not get media attention. "I will shout it from the rooftops if it saves a life. And please know that anything that I ever post is the truth and from my heart. I don't have time for anything else," she said while also providing evidence that she called the police. She also had her lawyer look into the blogger who was trying to defame her.

In November 2022, HGTV reality star Mike Jackson took to Instagram to announce his cousin died from a pregnancy-related issue. Jackson's caption indicated that his cousin's death was a result of doctors not listening to her pain as he said, "Dear Physician's, Please listen to black woman when they say something's not right, something's wrong, I'm in pain, etc.," he said. He further said: "My cousin could've still been alive if the doctors would've cared a bit more. Researched a bit more!"

Later in the caption, Jackson noted that racial disparities exist as three more Black women are likely to die in pregnancy than white women. On her own Instagram page, Egypt Sherrod shared on Jackson's cousin's case and encouraged healthcare workers to listen more to their patients. "Healthcare workers, we love you, we understand that your backs are against the wall, we understand that you're understaffed — but we need you, if you're going to be in that position, to pay attention to the signs, and to listen, and to go that extra mile, because ... you guys have folks' lives in your hands," Sherrod said. Given that Sherrod had her own health woes that almost took her life following her second pregnancy, it is understandable why she would be advocating for women's pregnant and postpartum needs to be addressed.

After Egypt Sherrod's first pregnancy with her daughter Kendall, she started to experience postpartum depression which affected her sex life with Mike Jackson, according to a 2019 Black Love interview. Sherrod said she did not know what she was experiencing following her delivery, but she knew that she knew longer felt "sexy" and struggled to be intimate with Jackson. "I really couldn't tell him, 'I don't feel pretty, I don't feel sexy'... He was frustrated with me for a while because I just was not myself."

Jackson revealed the most frustrating part of the situation was not just being able to be intimate with his wife, but instead not knowing what had caused his wife to be different — at one point, the two considered getting a divorce. "I had to sort through those feelings or else I could eventually lose what we had all together," Sherrod said. Through medication and counseling, Sherrod was able to bounce back to her old self, and she encouraged women to be vocal with their partners about what they were dealing with.

"I think as women we go through very real changes in our bodies and lives when we have children. The point is for us to be fair to our mates, and trust them and tell them this is something deeper ... We can't expect them to read our minds," she said. Things between the couple are back to the way they used to be.