Celebrity

Jennie Garth's Heart Is Fine, Just Not Her Foot

Husband Peter Facinelli tells PEOPLE the actress hurt herself while holding their baby

Published on June 3, 2009 09:25 AM

Though afflicted with a heart ailment, Jennie Garth leads a normal life, the 90210 actress’s husband, Twilight star Peter Facinelli. tells PEOPLE.

“My wife has a leaky valve, which is pretty common. A lot of people have a leaky valve and they don’t even know that they have it,” Facinelli, 35, said at the Manhattan premiere party for his new Showtime series Nurse Jackie, starring Edie Falco.

“My wife is an advocate for getting your heart checked, because her father had heart disease, so she found out she has a leaky heart. But there’s really nothing you can do for it, so you just leave it alone.”

Some reports misconstrued the story by claiming Garth, 37, suffers from heart disease, he said. “I don’t know how that happened. I was sitting at home with her, and I saw a ticker tape on the news that said, ‘Jennie Garth has heart disease.’ I said, ‘Honey, you didn’t tell me.’ But no, she’s fine. She’s fine.”

Except, that is, for a broken foot. “She had the baby in her arms and she was answering the door, and she misstepped. She tried to save the baby, so she twisted and snapped her foot,” Facinelli revealed.

The couple, who married in 2001, have three children, ages 11, 6, and 2. The brood’s summer plan after Garth’s foot heals? A vacation to Hawaii and a possible trip to Oregon in their RV.

“We like taking road trips,” he told PEOPLE. “There’s a Twilight baseball game on July 4th that I signed up to do. It’s a charity benefit. I think I might drive the RV up there to Portland.”