Jon Batiste Married Suleika Jaouad Before Her Bone Marrow Transplant

Grammy award winner Jon Batiste quietly married his partner Suleika Jaouad in February.

During an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, Jaouad revealed that she and Batiste had tied the knot in February, the day before her scheduled bone marrow transplant as she battle Leukemia for a second time.

“We got married the day before I was admitted to the hospital to undergo my bone marrow transport,” she said.

Assuring that the couple had wanted to marry for some time, Jaouad said that their nuptials had little to do with her diagnosis.

“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 had eight years.” She added, “This is not, you know, a hasty decision.”

“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.’”

She continued, “But once we realised we had this tiny window before the bone marrow transplant, we decided to go for it.”

Describing their wedding as “tiny” but “perfect”, Jaouad – who authored the bestselling cancer memoir Between Two Kingdoms – said she and Batiste couldn’t have been happier.

“And I’ll tell you, we walked into that bone marrow transplant unit on cloud nine. We were so happy, so brimming with love and positivity from this beautiful evening that we’d had.” She added, “And I really believe that carried us through.”

During the 64th Grammy Awards on Sunday, Batiste took home an impressive five awards out of a possible eleven nominations.

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