Married at First Sight‘s AJ Vollmoeller is lucky to be alive after a motorcycle crash nearly ended his life.
During Tuesday’s all-new episode of the Lifetime reality show (produced by Kinetic Content), the 37-year-old reality personality opened up to wife Stephanie Sersen, 35, about a “near-death experience” that shaped him to be the man she married.
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AJ explained that at 18, he was taking his new motorcycle out for a spin one day when he spotted a man on the side of the road with his wife and small child, “waving his arms in the air—very, very erratic.”
The man was unsuccessfully trying to signal to AJ that his car had broken down in the middle lane of the highway, but the Lifetime star wasn’t able to spot the stalled car early enough to stop short of it.
“I’m getting chills talking about this,” AJ told his wife. “I hit dead center of the back bumper and I was ejected from the motorcycle, going over the car.”
Viewers then got to see shocking photos of the crash, showing AJ’s bike completely mangled in the wreckage of the car.
“I remember standing up, and I looked down expecting to see my body laying there,” he recalled, “because I knew what just happened and I thought there was no way I could be alive.”
Despite feeling “no pain whatsoever” in the moment, AJ explained that his shock to be alive was the last thing he remembered before waking up an unknown number of hours later in the hospital with screws in his shoulder.
Getting choked up remembering the moment he almost died, AJ reflected on how the crash had “shaped the person [he is].”
“When you think of a motorcycle accident of that magnitude, you expect mangled bodies everywhere,” he told the camera. “That’s why I’m so energetic and happy and smiling all the time, because I truly am happy to be alive. And that’s why I take so many risks and chances, because why not?”
He continued, “Life can be taken from you at any time. So, take the risks. Live your life. Be happy. That’s why I got Married at First Sight. Now I have Stephanie in my life, by my side. Take the risk. Date that person; apply to that job, whatever it may be. Do it. You get one shot at life, make it the best.”
Married at First Sight airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
Photo credit: Lifetime
