Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad are holding onto light and love amidst unexpected darkness.
In an interview for CBS Sunday Morning, the 35-year-old musician and his longtime girlfriend Suleika, an author, revealed that they secretly married in February. The couple cemented their love on the eve of Suleika’s bone marrow transplant as she battles leukemia for the second time.
Jon said of them getting married:
“It’s an act of defiance. The darkness will try to overtake you, but just turn on the light. Focus on the light. Hold onto the light.”
After eight years of being together, Jon and Suleika became husband and wife in the sweetest non-traditional way: With the help of bread ties in lieu of rings, and a marriage license that was procured while Suleika was in the operating room having a catheter put on her chest.
Suleika shared of the memorable evening:
“That night we went and bought our wedding outfits together, very last-minute, lots of laughter. But it was, you know, not anything like what we’d imagined. There were maybe four people present. It was private. It was tiny. And it was perfect.”
She said that as happy newlyweds, they were “brimming with love and positivity” as they headed into her transplant the following day:
“I really believe that that carried us through. That sense of community, that sense of love, that sense of joy and spontaneity were so important.”
Jon’s bride also shared that while their nuptials may have been done in haste, the decision to spend the rest of their lives as one was not:
“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.”
