Many of us are looking forward to the Super Bowl halftime performance but that is not the only performance happening. There is also one taking place at the Super Bowl opening ceremony.
Jon Batiste is set to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl on February 9, 2025. He is well known in the music industry but he is also known as a family man who stands by his wife, Suleika Jaouad as she is battling with cancer for the third time.
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Batiste's wife went on Instagram to share how she met her husband.
It turns out that she met him when she was 13 years old and he was 14. They met at band camp.
She has learned a lot about the creative process from being with him over the years. There were many who reacted to the revelation, saying that they had never known it.
Batiste was only eight years old when he started falling in love with music and began playing the drums. He was playing the piano by the time he was 12 and he mastered it before very long.
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His wife was diagnosed with cancer for the first time in 2011 and she only had a 35% opportunity to survive. She was able to overcome those odds and they got married in February 2022. That was shortly after she was diagnosed with leukemia for the second time.
They were together for 8 years before they finally got married at an intimate wedding that was attended only by close family members.
The singer said that their home is a sanctuary and allows them an area to recharge.
Even though they only had a small window of opportunity to get married before she had a transplant, they decided to go for it. He said that her illness did not impact the proposal and her diagnosis didn't change the way that he felt about her.
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She said: "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!"
Within a few months, he shared an update and said that she was doing better. He said that they were praying every day and called her incredible.
He then went on to say: "She has this ability to take the toughest challenges and make them life-affirming. So, with her it's a special case. How she's doing, it's a Suleika thing."
In October 2023 she was asked about her odds of surviving after the second diagnosis. She didn't give a very good outlook but she still stayed hopeful and said that her prognosis would improve if science advances and they found a suitable donor.
In late 2024, Jaouad was back online to say that she had some news.
She posted some photos and videos and revealed that she had a resurgence of cancer.
She said: "When you learn for the third time you have cancer, it's easy to feel hopeless. But my photos showed me that even in the hardest moments, there were so many joys. That life is not a monolith. That our forever work is to learn to hold the brutal and beautiful in the same palm."
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They continue to remain focused on her health but they are also focusing on the singer's upcoming performance at the Super Bowl.
Life can be difficult and we hope that the two of them are able to share many more happy memories together.