A relationship was in the cards for Tim and Emily Leary, but the Louisiana-based couple couldn’t predict the challenges they’d face over nearly two decades of marriage.
The pair started their relationship in 2001 while living 1,400 miles apart — Tim in New Jersey and Emily in Louisiana, and later faced three cancer diagnoses.
“We are well prepared for whatever life has in store for us,” Emily said. “Each day is a gift and we cherish every moment.”
While it’s not that unusual for both people in a couple to be diagnosed with cancer, the Learys’ situation is unique. They were both diagnosed with relatively rare cancers and treated using the same uncommon surgical procedure, according to Dr. Matthew Katz, who treated the Learys at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Emily’s understanding of Tim’s journey — and seeing his strong long-term recovery after a diagnosis that is so often associated with a poor prognosis — helped support her optimism and her ability to heal and return to daily life,” Dr. Katz said.
Tim and Emily Leary / Credit: Courtesy Emily Leary
The Learys, who learned from each other how to be both a patient and a caretaker, said they hope couples who hear their story will learn to trust their instincts – and trust in love.
A one-two punch
Just a few years into their marriage, Tim was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which the couple faced while navigating a move down south to Louisiana, where Emily is from.
She met Tim in a New York City bar in June 2001, a few hours before she caught a flight home. That night, a man in the bar did a card reading for Emily. Tim, who said he had been interested in Emily from the moment he spotted her, walked over and asked Emily what the card reader had told her.
“He said, ‘There’s going to be a light-haired guy and a dark-haired guy in your life.’ And I said, ‘Well, maybe I’m the dark-haired guy,'” Tim, who has dark hair, said.
The pair had 30 minutes together before Emily flew home. They emailed back and forth for a bit after their meeting, but eventually lost touch.
Then 9/11 happened, and Emily, remembering that Tim worked close to the World Trade Center, emailed him. Before the end of the year, they knew they wanted to be together, despite the distance.
“After reconnecting post 9/11, we both knew right away that we were soul mates,” Emily said. “At the time, we didn’t see the distance as a challenge because our time together was intense and exciting.”
Emily and Tim in 2001, the year they met / Credit: Courtesy Emily Leary
They committed to a long-distance relationship for the next few years as their kids, two daughters each from previous relationships, grew up. Tim and Emily got engaged during a trip to Paris in 2004, then married in 2006 before starting their life as newlyweds in New Jersey.
Then in 2011, Tim, who had no history of cancer in his family, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a prostatectomy before they moved down south to Louisiana the following year.
Tim learned a few months later that he had a tumor in his pancreas. In Tim’s case, the tumor was near a bile duct. So as it grew, the bile duct was obstructed, making him jaundiced.
That’s how doctors caught his second cancer early.
“The person you love going through it”
Tim and Emily in 2012 traveled to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where Tim endured nine months of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation. The doctors told him after the initial treatment that he needed to have a Whipple procedure — a surgery where part of the pancreas, gallbladder, bile duct and small intestine are removed — in 2013.
Emily, who at 32 lost her own mother to pancreatic cancer, said she did her best to stay strong for Tim.
“I had to go through life with blinders on, like a machine,” she said.
Tim was also hospitalized for treatment of three abscesses of the liver — a complication from Whipple surgery, often caused by an infection or bacteria — in 2020, 2021 and 2022. He had a surgical repair procedure in October 2022.
Tim Leary was diagnosed with cancer twice: first with prostate cancer, then with pancreatic cancer. / Credit: Courtesy Emily Leary
Emily had a pain in her side that wasn’t getting better in 2021, while Tim was getting treatment. She went to see her doctor, who ordered an ultrasound and found a tumor in her pancreas.
She remembers having a “big pity party,” and crying and screaming for hours before a test.
Doctors said Emily, just like Tim, also needed treatment for a liver abscess after her Whipple procedure for her neuroendocrine tumor, a slower-growing tumor.
Tim, who’d stayed relatively calm throughout his two bouts with cancer and his Whipple, said he had a harder time when Emily was diagnosed.
“When Emily started going through it and I was sitting by the bed and I was sitting in the waiting room, then I started getting flashbacks,” he said. “It was sort of like PTSD, because you’re almost going through it again, even though it’s not you, it’s the person that you love going through it.”
They’re both now in remission, though they go back to MD Anderson for checkups.
Tim, now 69, and Emily, now 68, enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren and traveling together. They have three cats — a girl and two brothers. They said they’re most looking forward to growing old together.
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