Suleika Jaouad is an Emmy-winning columnist, while Jon Batiste has a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.
Who is Jon Batiste’s wife Suleika Jaouad?
Born on July 5, 1988, Suleika Jaouad is a native of New York City.
Suleika attended the pre-college program at the Julliard School, studying the double bass.
She graduated with the highest honors from Princeton University in 2010, majoring in Near Eastern Studies with a double minor in Gender Studies and French.
While at Princeton, the now 33-year-old worked on several human rights campaigns and studied abroad throughout Africa.
Continuing her education, Suleika earned a Master’s degree in Writing and Literature from Bennington College.
At the age of 22, Suleika was diagnosed with leukemia.
She began writing a column for the New York Times – Life, Interrupted – while in her hospital room at Sloan-Kettering, located in upper Manhattan.
Suleika has served as a member of Barack Obama‘s Presidential Cancer Panel, the national advisory board of Family Reach, the Bone Marrow and Cancer Foundation, and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Arts & Letters Committee.
Aside from her column, Suleika Jaouad has words published by Vogue, Glamour, NPR, and Women’s Health.
She was an Anacapa Scholar in Residence at the Thacher School and a lecturer in the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University.
In 2019, Suleika’s TED Talk – What almost dying taught me about living – was released.
The following year, she published Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted.
When did Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste meet?
Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad met as teenagers while at band camp.
She was 13 and he was 14 – according to an Instagram photo shared on Suleika’s profile.
“Over the last two decades I’ve learned more about the creative process from [Jon] than any craft book or fancy degree,” she captioned the post.
During the initial Covid-19 quarantine of 2020, Jon opened up to People about his time with Suleika.
“Obviously there’s so much loss that we’ve faced individually and collectively, but I find that this time has also been a blessing in that it gives us a break to be with each other,” he said at the time.
When did the pair get married?
The Grammy-nominated musician and best-selling author revealed to CBS Sunday Morning that they secretly married in February of 2022, just after Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with leukemia for a second time.
“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. This is not, you know, a hasty decision!” Suleika told correspondent Jim Axelrod.
