Maria Menounos Announces Plans to Start IVF Days After Revealing Brain Tumor

Maria Menounos and fiancé Keven Undergaro aren’t letting a brain tumor get in their way of starting a family. The couple, who have been dating for 20 years and engaged since last spring, told PEOPLE that they plan on undergoing in vitro fertilization to expand their family.

Menounos revealed earlier this week that she had a benign tumor the size of a golf ball removed from her brain on June 8 — her 39th birthday. The TV and Sirius XM host says that the surgery was successful and that she’s still in recovery — while caring for her mother, Litsa, who is battling stage 4 brain cancer.

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Menounos told PEOPLE that she and Undergaro still “want to have a family” and that she’s “lucky” she wasn’t pregnant when the tumor was discovered. “When you are pregnant, [tumors] grow fast,” she says.

Menounos has been vocal about IVF in the past, and shared on Snapchat last May that she was undergoing treatments at the time.

“The greatest thing that has happened out of all of this is you see God’s hands all around,” she said.

The Dancing With the Stars alum and E! News host also praised Undergaro for his support during her surgery.

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“He’d nap with me so I didn’t feel like I was alone, never left my side, never left the hospital, never got tired, never nothing,” she says, adding that her outlook on life since the crisis is “completely different now.”

“When something like this happens, it’s so important to have people in your life that are going to lift you up. I was lucky enough to have that army around me.”

Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Jaguar PS