Musician Jon Batiste, the bandleader of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and Suleika Jaouad, author of the bestselling cancer memoir “Between Two Kingdoms,” revealed that they secretly got married in February, they told “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The couple, who have been together for eight years, decided to wed after she was recently diagnosed with leukemia for a second time. “We got married the day before I was admitted to the hospital to undergo my bone marrow transplant,” she told correspondent Jim Axelrod.
“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!” she laughed.
Suleika Jaouad said that the suddenness of the “tiny, beautiful, little ceremony” meant they made do without formal rings. “We used bread ties,” she said.
Jaouad said that after she got her diagnosis, Batiste revealed his plans to propose had been months in the works. “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.
He added: ‘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.”
But once we realized we had this tiny window before the bone marrow transplant, we decided to go for it.
Batiste and Suleika Jaouad were able to get their marriage license quickly and had a “tiny” and “perfect” wedding, adding that they “used bread ties” instead of formal wedding rings.
During the 64th Annual Grammy Awards Sunday, Batiste took home five awards, including best music video and album of the year, after receiving a whopping 11 nominations for the evening.
