Editor’s note: The original November 2023 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the reporting cited below, and added what happened afterward. The original repeated unverified rumors about Armine Shamiryan’s career and described Johnson’s adult child’s activities using social media posts; this version leaves both out, because neither is supported by credible reporting and the child is a private person.
Michael Johnson won the 200 and 400 meters at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a double no man had managed before, as the American Heart Association has noted. What is on the record about his marriage comes mostly from interviews he has given, and from accounts of the stroke he suffered in 2018.
A chef he met through friends
Johnson is married to Armine Shamiryan, a chef. In a 2012 interview with The Telegraph, he said the two had met by chance through friends in Los Angeles nine years earlier. The reporter described her as Armenian and found her in the kitchen of their home preparing lunch.
Asked about her husband, Shamiryan told the newspaper, “He is a control freak,” and said with affection that he made her work out every day. She also said he had changed as he got older and had learned to accept that not everything can be perfect.
His first marriage
Shamiryan is Johnson’s second wife. He married Kerry Doyen on Oct. 3, 1998, and the couple had a child in May 2000, according to a biographical profile on Encyclopedia.com. The same profile says the family moved from Dallas to Mill Valley, in Marin County, California, in the fall of 2001. The Telegraph identified D’Oyen, as it spelled her name, as an entertainment reporter and said the marriage ended after Johnson retired.
At his side after a stroke
Shamiryan was with Johnson when he had a stroke at the end of August 2018, at their home in Malibu. He had just finished a 45-minute workout and was talking with his wife when his left leg stopped working properly, The Dallas Morning News reported.
An account published by the American Heart Association in 2019 added more detail. The couple had recently moved from San Francisco to Malibu after their child left for college in New York. When his left arm began to tingle, his wife drove him to an urgent care center, and doctors there sent him to UCLA Medical Center. Six weeks later, the account said, she could no longer see a limp. The same article mentioned the couple’s dog, an Italian water dog named Angelo.
At the time, Johnson was president of Michael Johnson Performance, a training center in a Dallas suburb, and worked as a motivational speaker and a track analyst for the BBC, the heart association noted.
What happened next
Johnson’s working life changed after this article first ran. He launched Grand Slam Track, a professional track league, which held its first season in 2025. In December 2025 the league sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware after a difficult debut year that included a canceled Los Angeles final and trouble paying athletes, The Independent reported.
In March 2026, BBC Sport reported that Johnson had not worked for the broadcaster since the Paris 2024 Olympics. A spokesperson for Johnson said leaving was his own decision, made so he could focus on Grand Slam Track.
