"You won't believe he's going through what he's going through when you see him," Batiste told news about his wife, Jawad.
John Batiste credits his wife, Suleika Jawad, for her strength during this difficult time.
At the Time 100 gala Wednesday night, the We Are People artist revealed his wife's struggles with leukemia and why they decided to get married in their new home.
The couple married in February, shortly after Jawad, 33, was diagnosed with leukemia for the second time. Now Batiste says he's "doing better."
"Every day, we pray and move on – I mean, it's amazing. "You wouldn't believe she went through what she went through when you saw her," Batiste, 35, told PEOPLE. "He can take on the toughest challenges and make them work. Life-affirming. So this is a special case for her. How she does it is something for Suleika." She also revealed that her decision to get married in her new home felt like a blank slate.
"The house is like a temple. It is truly a place where we go and recharge our souls. We've built something very, very special. It's a combination of the two of us," he said. "It's the perfect combination of our shared experiences and our united ancestors' experiences. And, amazingly, we have it amid this time."
He continued, "Our time there has helped undo many things that happened. We got married in this house."
Batiste also said the ceremony was intimate because it was a last-minute decision.
"It was just close family. It was one of the things we did the day before his bone marrow transplant, it was an intense moment in our lives, obviously for many reasons," he said. house – it's been three years since we renovated, built, and found furniture and did all these things to improve it, so it's a beautiful combination of all of that."
