Love Is Blind’s Amy Shares How Husband Johnny Supported Her Through Health Scare When She Felt ‘Broken’ (Exclusive)

Johnny McIntyre and Amy Cortés agreed to stay together in sickness and in health when they said “I do” in Love Is Blind‘s season 6 finale. But the reality stars didn’t expect to be tested in that regard so soon into their marriage.

Cortés, 28, told PEOPLE at the Wildly Better Well-Being event on June 21 celebrating the launch of Roxanne Kaiser’s Proxy gummies in N.Y.C. that at the start of the year, she felt a chest pain that her doctor informed her was an inflammation of her sternum and ribs due to stress.

“I remember when I would sneeze, I felt like my whole chest was shattering,” Cortés recalled. “I was like, I don’t know what’s going on with me. Right before the show aired, that’s when it was getting really more stressful at work. I was very overwhelmed and so it came to a point where, in the beginning of the year, I felt the worst pain.”

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

“He would always nudge me like, ‘You need to put yourself first in a lot of situations,’” she said. “I had a really raw, deep conversation with him where I told him my intrusive thoughts. I remember crying, I was like, ‘I feel like I’m broken. I feel like I got married to you and I feel like I’m just shattering into pieces.’”

But McIntyre comforted her. “It’s what we signed up for,” he told PEOPLE. “It’s whatever comes up. That’s how we step up.”

The couple decided together that Cortés should step away from her job as an eCommerce senior retail specialist.

“I feel like, especially in corporate America, the statistics of Latinas leveling up and accomplishing this is very, very little 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’s time for a change.”

Cortés said she does see herself returning to corporate America “eventually” and credited her husband with being her “biggest support system” during that transition. “I’m in a much healthier, happier state now and it wouldn’t have been if it weren’t for him,” she said. “I feel like he did hold me accountable while accommodating for what I needed and giving me grace and being that support system. I’m very grateful.”

McIntyre said he and Cortés started engaging in “conversations that are more meaningful” since weathering her health scare together.

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

The TV personality said he and Cortés wait to have those check-in conversations until “we’re completely free and we put our phones down.”  

“Johnny was there, he listened to me and he made sure that I felt validated,” Cortés said. “He was going to support me no matter what, in sickness and in health.”

After celebrating their first wedding anniversary in May, Cortés and McIntyre look forward to purchasing their first home in Charlotte, N.C. (but not “super, super soon,” she said) and doing more traveling together.

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

More immediately, the pair plans to head to Maine for McIntyre’s family reunion that features an Olympic-style competition including synchronized swimming, Jeopardy! and “drunk escapades,” according to McIntyre. “We play silly games and things you see on TikTok and it’s just a great time,” he added.

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

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Love Is Blind is streaming now on Netflix.