Jon Batiste, Suleika Jaouad Privately Wed After Her Leukemia Diagnosis

Jon Batiste is not only a five-time Grammy winner, he’s also a newlywed.

The 35-year-old musician recently revealed that he privately wed author Suleika Jaouad back in February.

“We’ve been secret married until this moment,” Jaouad also shared while on CBS This Morning April 3. “We didn’t have wedding bands. We used bread ties.”

Still, it hasn’t been a completely celebratory time for the couple of eight years. Back in November, Jaouad, 33, was diagnosed with leukemia for a second time, having gone into remission in her 20s. As she told correspondent Jim Axelrod, “It was far more aggressive than it had been a decade ago.” 

So, the night before Jaouad’s bone marrow transplant, they said, “I do,” an event that would have one day happened for the pair regardless of health.

“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.”