In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the Grammy winner and Jaouad detailed their February ceremony, which befell the day earlier than Jaouad's bone marrow transplant as she battles Leukemia a second time.
Grammy winner Jon Batiste and longtime accomplice Suleika Jaouad have revealed they secretly obtained married.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Batiste and Jaouad shared the information that they married in a secret February ceremony, which befell the day earlier than Jaouad’s bone marrow transplant as she battles Leukemia a second time.
“We had this tiny, stunning little ceremony. We didn’t have marriage ceremony bands, we used bread ties,” she mentioned to correspondent Jim Axelrod. Jaouad described the ceremony as non-public, iven solely 4 individuals had been current. “And it was good,” she added.
Eight days previous to the 2022 Grammy nominations being introduced, Jaouad started her first day of chemo, calling her second battle with Leukemia “much more aggressive than it had been a decade in the past.”
“We’re sitting on this chemo suite collectively and these cellphone calls of congratulations are coming and we’re having to carry these two realities,” she mentioned.
After Jaouad underwent a bone marrow transplant, Batiste was unable to stick with her as a result of then-surging omicron variant of COVID-19. She shared that whereas chatting with him nearly, Batiste would write her a brand new lullaby: “It felt like he was proper there, you recognize, sleeping by my bedside.” Batiste mentioned he wrote the lullabies “to fill the room with this therapeutic properties.”
Regardless of a attempting time for the couple, who've been collectively for eight years, Batiste described the present circumstances as “only a bump within the highway” to their plans.
“Okay this has occurred, however this isn’t gonna interrupt the plan that we had, that is only a bump within the highway… it’s an act of defiance. The darkness will attempt to overtake you, however simply activate the sunshine; deal with the sunshine, maintain on to the sunshine,” he mentioned.
After studying of her analysis, Jaouad mentioned Batiste revealed that his plans to suggest had already been months within the works: “He mentioned to me, ‘I simply wish to be very clear, I’m not proposing to you due to this analysis. It’s taken me a 12 months to design your ring. So, simply know this timing has nothing to do with it. However what I do need you to know is that this analysis doesn’t change something. It simply makes it all of the clearer to me that I wish to decide to this and for us to be collectively.’ However as soon as we realized we had this tiny window earlier than the bone marrow transplant, we determined to go for it.”
Jaouad mentioned they “walked into that bone marrow transplant unit on cloud 9.”
“We had been so completely happy, so brimming with love and positivity from this stunning night that we’d had,” she mentioned. “And I actually imagine that that carried us by. That sense of group, that sense of affection, that sense of pleasure and spontaneity had been so essential.”
The CBS Sunday Morning particular aired on the identical day Batiste went into the Grammy Awards as a number one nominee with 11 nods, together with within the high classes of report of the 12 months and album of the 12 months, the latter of which he received for his album We Are.
When accepting album of the 12 months award, Batiste mirrored on how highly effective music might be for a lot of. “I imagine this to my core, there is no such thing as a finest musician, finest artist, finest dancer, finest actor…the artistic arts are subjective and so they attain individuals at a degree of their lives after they want it most. It’s like a tune or an album is made and it virtually has a radar to search out the particular person after they want it essentially the most,” he mentioned onstage.
Within the nontelevised ceremony earlier within the day, Batiste additionally received 4 awards: finest music video for “Freedom,” finest rating soundtrack for visible media for Soul, and finest American roots efficiency and finest American roots tune for “Cry.”