Jon Batiste and Wife Suleika Jaouad’s Relationship Timeline
Jon Batiste and wife Suleika Jaouad are a united force, no matter what life throws at them.
“I’m always in awe of Suleika, how she deals with hardship,” Batiste said in a trailer for the November 2023 Netflix documentary American Symphony.
The film follows a year in Batiste’s life, documenting his soaring professional success as Jaoud battles leukemia. After initially going into remission in her 20s, Jaouad relapsed in 2021. That November, she began chemotherapy treatments on the same day that Batiste received a total of 11 Grammy nominations.
Batiste and Jaouad tied the knot in February 2022, one day before Jaouad received a bone marrow transplant.
“We have known that we wanted to get married, I think, from the first week that we started dating,” Jaouad said during an April 2022 appearance on CBS Mornings.
Keep scrolling for a look at Batiste and Jaouad’s love story over the years:
2014
The twosome started dating years after they first met as teenagers.
“Jon and I met when I was 13 and he was 14 — and if that weren’t awkward enough, it was at the most awkward place on earth: band camp,” Jaouad wrote via Instagram in 2020.
2017
Jaouad wished the Soul composer a happy birthday via Instagram.
“My favorite sharp-dressing, piano-playing, big-hearted, brilliant nerd of a man was born 31 years ago today. Happy circle around the sun, @jonbatiste!” she captioned a photo of the pair.
2018
“Crawled out of the writing cave to go on a date with this handsome human,” Jaouad captioned an Instagram snap of herself and Batiste smiling at the Kennedy Center Honors.
2019
Jaouad showed her support for Batiste’s live album, Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard.
“Somehow, in the midst of an already grueling schedule, he’s managed to drop yet another album,” she wrote via Instagram. “Please stop making the rest of us look so lazy?!”
2021
After Batiste won an Oscar for Best Original Score for his work on the Pixar film Soul — along with collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — Jaouad sang his praises via Instagram.
“To watch this man grow and evolve from the awkward shy boy I met at band camp into the luminous, showstopping man he is today — it’s beyond words. I couldn’t be more proud of you,” she wrote alongside photos from the awards show.
February 2022
The duo quietly tied the knot in a “tiny, beautiful little ceremony,” as Jaouad described it during an appearance on CBS Mornings two months later. Because of the impromptu nature of the wedding, the pair used bread ties instead of formal wedding rings.
April 2022
Batiste and Jaouad opened up about their wedding during an appearance on CBS Mornings. Batiste described the nuptials as “an act of defiance” in the face of Jaouad’s health struggles. “The darkness will try to overtake you, but just turn on the light. Focus on the light. Hold onto the light,” he said.
Jaouad shared that Batiste had been planning to propose to her for over a year before she received her second cancer diagnosis.
“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.”
May 2022
Batiste gave an update on Jaouad’s health while speaking to Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet for the Met Gala.
“She’s doing great. This is actually the best two weeks we’ve had so far. I’m very grateful,” he said.
The musician also gushed about his wife.
“I have so much that I wanna say about her because I could speak just about her radiance endlessly,” he said. “If you find the right person, lock it in. Life is short. You never know what’s going to happen so you just gotta lock it in. These moments are beautiful — the highs and lows of life. Just stay with the one you love and everything will be OK.”
February 2023
The twosome attended a Brooklyn Nets game together. “We’re outside and we’re living
,” Jaouad captioned an Instagram selfie of the pair in their seats.
November 2023
Batiste shared the trailer for American Symphony via Instagram.
“We love y’all. American Symphony is a raw, intimate portrait of our lives that speaks to the healing power of love and creativity,” he wrote in the caption.
