Grammy Winner Reveals He Secretly Got Married After Partner Received Leukemia Diagnosis

Jon Batiste is a married man! During a Monday morning appearance on CBS Sunday Morning just hours after he took home five awards during the 64th Annual Grammy Awards Sunday night, the Album of the Year winner and his longtime partner Suleika Jaouad revealed they secretly married amid Jaouad’s cancer diagnosis.

Opening up about the major step in their relationship, Jaouad shared that she and her husband tied the knot shortly after she was diagnosed with leukemia for the second time. Jaouad shared that they “got married the day before I was admitted to the hospital to undergo my bone marrow transplant.” While the decision was abrupt, Jaouad said it was not “a hasty decision,” explaining that “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.” Jaouad added that her diagnosis was not the reason for the proposal.

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

After quickly getting their marriage license “at the very last minute” as Jaouad was in the OR getting a catheter placed into my chest,” Jaouad and Batiste tied the knot in a “tiny” and “perfect” wedding ceremony, according to the couple, who said they swapped typical wedding rings for “bread ties.” Calling the day “absurd,” Jaouad added, “there were nurses around, there were surgeons around. We had this computer. I was in a hospital gown. But we made it happen… But it was, you know, not anything like what we’d imagined. There were maybe four people present. It was private.”

Reflecting on their big day and her cancer battle, Jaouad shared, “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. And I really believe that that carried us through.”