Love Is Blind’s Amy Felt ‘Broken’ Amid Health Scares (Exclusive)

• Johnny McIntyre and Amy Cortés met and married in season 6 of the Netflix series Love is blind
• Cortés told PEOPLE that she was suffering from a stress-related illness at the time her season aired earlier this year
• The reality star said she is now in a “much healthier, happier state” thanks to her husband

Johnny McIntyre and Amy Cortés agreed to stay together through good times and bad when they met in Love is blindThe season 6 finale of “The 4000” was a tough one for the reality stars, however. But the reality stars did not expect that they would be put to the test in this regard so early in their marriage.

Cortés, 28, told PEOPLE on June 21 at the Wildly Better Well-Being event launching Roxanne Kaiser Proxy gummy bears in New York that she began experiencing chest pains earlier this year that her doctor attributed to stress-related inflammation of her breastbone and ribs.

“I remember when I sneezed, it felt like my whole chest was going to explode,” Cortés recalls. “I thought, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Shortly before the show aired, things at work were getting more and more stressful. I was completely overwhelmed and it got to the point where I felt the worst pain at the beginning of the year.”

McIntyre, 28, encouraged Cortés to see a doctor and put herself first.

“He would always nudge me, as if he was saying, ‘In a lot of situations, you have to put yourself first,'” she said. “I had a really open, deep conversation with him where I told him my intrusive thoughts. I remember crying and thinking, ‘I feel like I’m broken. I feel like I married you and I’m falling to pieces.'”

But McIntyre consoled her. “This is what we decided to do,” he told PEOPLE. “It is, whatever happens, this is how we compete.”

The couple decided together that Cortés should give up her job as a senior retail specialist in eCommerce.

“I feel like especially in the American corporate world, there are very, very few Latinas who rise up and achieve that, and I felt like I wanted to keep going. I’m such a workaholic,” Cortés said. “I wanted to break that statistic. But my body was telling me it was time for a change.”

Cortés said she could see herself returning to the American business world “at some point” and thanked her husband for being “the biggest support” during this transition. “I’m much healthier and happier now, and that wouldn’t have been the case without him,” she said. “I feel like he held me accountable, accommodated me when I needed it, showed me grace and provided me with that support. I’m very grateful.”

McIntyre said he and Cortés have begun having “more meaningful conversations” since they overcame the health issues together.

“We always joked around in the pods and when we’re filming we have our check-ins, but maybe a month or two after the show aired we just stopped doing that,” McIntyre revealed. “We just got into a state of ‘OK, I work in this corner, you work in this corner of the room, we talk sometimes.’ And I feel like since then we’ve been able to take a step away from that and really focus on ourselves.”

The television star said he and Cortés are waiting to have these check-in conversations until “we are completely free and put our phones away.”

“Johnny was there, he listened to me and made me feel validated,” said Cortés. “He supported me in every way, in sickness and in health.”

After celebrating their first wedding anniversary in May, Cortés and McIntyre are looking forward to buying their first home in Charlotte, North Carolina (but not “super, super soon,” she said) and traveling together more often.

“I really want to go to Asia with him,” Cortés said. “I want to go to Japan or South Korea or both. After experiencing Japan for the first time – literally a month after we got married, I had already planned the trip with my best friend – I always thought, ‘I wish you were here to experience this.'”

In the short term, the couple plans to travel to Maine for McIntyre’s family reunion, which will feature an Olympic synchronized swimming competition. Danger! and “drunken antics,” McIntyre said. “We play silly games and things you see on TikTok and it’s just fun,” he added.

“I’m ready,” said Cortés. “I’m so excited!”

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Love is blind is now streaming on Netflix.