Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste and New York Times bestselling author Suleika Jaouad secretly tied the knot a day before she was scheduled to undergo a bone marrow transplant.
Jaouad, who was diagnosed with leukemia for a second time, revealed the news in an interview on "CBS Sunday Morning."
“We got married the day before I was admitted to the hospital to undergo my bone marrow transplant,” said Jaouad, the author of the memoir "Between Two Kingdoms," which documents her journey fighting against and recovering from leukemia.
Jaouad continued: “We have known that we wanted to get married, I think, from the first week that we started dating. That’s when Jon first brought up the topic of marriage to me. So, we’ve had eight years. This is not, you know, a hasty decision!”
She said the wedding was a “tiny, beautiful, little ceremony,” adding that because of its suddenness, the two used bread ties instead of formal rings.
Jaouad added that Batiste told her a proposal had been in the works months before her second cancer diagnosis.
“He said to me, ‘I just want to be very clear, I’m not proposing to you because of this diagnosis. It’s taken me a year to design your ring. So, just know this timing has nothing to do with it. But what I do want you to know is that this diagnosis doesn’t change anything. It just makes it all the clearer to me that I want to commit to this and for us to be together.' But once we realized we had this tiny window before the bone marrow transplant, we decided to go for it," Jaouad said.
“And I’ll tell you, we walked into that bone marrow transplant unit on cloud nine," she said. "We were so happy, so brimming with love and positivity from this beautiful evening that we’d had. And I really believe that that carried us through."
On Sunday, Batiste took home five Grammy Awards, including the coveted album of the year honor for "We Are."
