Last week, I shared that my wife has breast cancer. Hundreds of you wrote back with your thoughts and prayers. I was so touched that I did what I said I wasn’t going to do: I recorded a podcast about our situation, the importance of unconditional love, and my clients who have found it and credit me for helping them.

Warning: I blubber my way through this like you can’t even imagine. I’m not proud of it. But I’m truly moved by the love I feel in this moment and I thought this was the only way I could share with you.

I hope this touches the part of you that deeply wants to be loved.

Click here to follow my wife’s cancer journey.

Click here to help support my wife on her cancer journey.

What You’ll Hear: 

I open up for the first time about my wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and why I decided to share something so personal on a podcast about dating and relationships.

You’ll hear how this unexpected health crisis has impacted our lives—and why we’ve chosen to treat it as a detour, not a tragedy.

I reflect on the emotional toll of navigating the healthcare system, changing doctors, and making life-altering decisions in a matter of days.

I share the incredible outpouring of love and support we’ve received from friends, clients, and complete strangers—and why it moved me more than I can say.

You’ll hear stories that show who my wife really is—resilient, joyful, and determined to keep living fully even in the face of chemo.

I explain why I believe marriage matters—not just for romance, but for moments like this, when having a true partner makes all the difference.

I read three powerful testimonials from women whose lives were changed by Love U—proof that even in dark moments, this work is deeply meaningful.

And finally, I talk about why I’m not stepping back from coaching during this season of life—because love, purpose, and connection matter now more than ever.

Full Episode Transcript: 

Last month, my wife was diagnosed with stage 2 triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma. Since then, everything’s been a whirlwind. I posted on social media about it last week and haven’t talked about it publicly because of a few reasons.

A, I wasn’t sure I could do this without crying and B, I wasn’t sure anyone was interested. People turned to me for dating and relationship advice, not my personal life or my thoughts on cancer. But then I read the comments on social media and the emails in my inbox and I realized that people really do care.

Like, so much that I can’t quite describe it unless you’re also a semi-public figure. Not only do I have 1600 real life friends on Facebook offering me their prayers and doctors and alternate remedies, but I have thousands of readers and listeners who’ve grown up with me over the past 22 years. People who’ve been… sorry, I’m reading from a script that I wrote.

People who’ve witnessed my journey from 31 year old single guy to 53 year old married guy and are invested in my marriage and my happiness. It’s been astonishing. So while I don’t want to let breast cancer hijack my podcast, I don’t think it would be authentic to act like nothing’s going on because, well, a lot is going on.

Today’s episode will be about my thoughts and feelings about the subject, but most episodes in the upcoming future will be the same kind of dating and relationship advice you’ve come to expect and are the main reason you’re listening. My guess is I’ll probably do a once a month check-in on my wife’s situation for those who are interested. With that out of the way, here is the very latest news, like up-to-the-minute news on my wife’s breast cancer.

So she was diagnosed in late June. We were given a doctor and a course of treatment. She was supposed to have a lumpectomy.

We went public on our private Facebook group to get second opinions and, well, a lot happened since then. So thanks to all of our Facebook friends who offered second opinions and doctors, we ended up changing our doctor, changing our insurance, and changing our treatment plan, and that has been taking up the bulk of my past three weeks. It was a lot of work, it was incredibly stressful, and it’s an indictment of the entire health care system, but I’m not going to get into the weeds about that.

The bad news is that my wife came perilously close to having unnecessary surgery and we’ve had to let the cancer grow in her body for probably an extra three weeks than we would have liked. The good news is that we now have an oncologist at Cedars-Sinai and my wife’s treatments begin on August 4th. As a couple, we’ve been very lucky to have largely avoided tragedy throughout our marriage.

We’ve been together for over 17 years and one of the only things that ever happened to us, it’s not a story I tell frequently, was our trouble getting pregnant. We got married about a month before my wife turned 39, we immediately started trying for kids, we had two chemical pregnancies, she had a fibroid surgery, and she had two miscarriages as well before she gave birth at 41 and 42. I do remember when she had a miscarriage, I don’t remember which one it was, whether it was the first or the second, she, you know, it was devastating.

She had to go to the doctor to get a D&C and I was there and I was holding her hand through the process and I remember that night she said, do you think we should still go to salsa lessons tonight? I mean, I’m feeling fine, there’s no reason for me to sit at home, you know, lamenting what happened and I thought that most encapsulated who she is, right? There’s no right or wrong way to mourn. I know people who’ve gone into deep dark depressions post-miscarriage. My wife and I went to salsa lessons because that’s what we did every week and so why should we let this get in the way of us living our lives? That’s the way we’re dealing with things right now.

We’re just trying to make the best of the circumstances and honestly, pack in as much fun and love as we can before the shit starts to go down. So, two weeks ago and again, this is after the diagnosis and while we’re scrambling to find doctors, we went for a weekend wine tasting with another couple in Los Olivos, sight of sideways. Last weekend, I scrapped my annual backyard pool party and instead had a spontaneous potluck dinner for my wife with 30 friends who came out to see her with virtually no notice.

And because our 17-day summer vacation, we’re going to take a family road trip to Colorado since that has now been scrapped due to upcoming chemo treatments, we’re doing a two and a half day summer vacation which is pretty much all we can get done before chemo starts on August 4th. So, we’re trying not to treat this as life and death. It might be, but we’re not looking at it like that.

We’re looking at it as an interruption, something closer to the pandemic than to a horror movie. It sucks for all of us but especially my wife that she’s going to have to be in so much discomfort and lose her hair and be tired all the time, but it is a thing that’s happening that we can’t do anything about and we just have to get through to the other side. As for me, I’ve spent most of my life trying to help other people.

I’m learning to accept help from others. Oh God, this is where I’m going to cry. So, I’m learning to accept help from others.

There are people who often offer to send us meals or take the kids for a weekend. Right now, it’s just too early to know what kind of support we’re going to need. We are grateful to feel so much love coming from all over the internet.

It’s comforting to know how many people have been through some version of this process who had similar diagnoses and come out on the other side stronger, but I think the main reason I’m choosing to do this podcast and again, I was just going to write about it because I knew I was going to cry. The reason I’m doing this is twofold. Sometime in the past couple of weeks, the thought dawned upon me that early in my marriage when I was writing about the difference between being single and getting married and making a good choice with your partner, I was starting to formulate my theories about what’s really important in a person.

Probably started coming up with the idea of the five C’s, character, kindness, consistency, communication, commitment, and exalting those virtues, at least on an equal plane with what most people do, which is chemistry and common interests. So then the example I would give, and again, I just remember this, it just hit me. I would always give this example when I was coaching.

You may look for a guy online who’s six feet tall and makes six figures, but what you really need is a guy who’s going to drive you to your chemo treatments in 20 years. That’s what I said. Who knew how prophetic that was going to be? Naturally, the thought occurred to me about how my wife would take care of me if the roles were reversed.

This is why I’m such a big believer in love and in marriage. Not that you can’t go through cancer with just the support of your close girlfriends or not that you need a piece of paper to validate your love, but there’s something about the commitment to the commitment to be there for someone for the rest of their lives that is indubitably deeper and more binding than just being boyfriend and girlfriend and seeing each other for dinner and sex and travel every other weekend. It’s just different.

This brings me to three emails that I received this week that came off the heels of my wife’s cancer announcement. These emails have been unedited, so if they sound a little more self-aggrandizing than I would like, I’ll take that. I did not write any of these words, but I’m sharing them with you for a reason.

This is the reason that I do this job. You should have seen my wedding vows. Anyway, here we go.

I want to thank you wholeheartedly for love you and for all of your coaching. I’m now 60. I was a widow to suicide in 2017 after 22 years of marriage.

It wasn’t a good marriage and I’m just as responsible for that as he was. I’d had a brief marriage before that. My first one ended in him leaving abruptly with no warning and no hint that anything was wrong.

Along with my physical healing, I’ve done a lot of emotional healing, trauma resolution, mindset improvement, et cetera. It took me nearly five years to be willing to try dating, and then there was a year plus of very mismatched first dates. Then there was a series of five men that I had two to three dates each, and each taught me a clear lesson that stuck with me permanently.

Two years ago this month, I met my boyfriend. We are completely mismatched on paper. If I’d just seen his profile, I wouldn’t have even paused on it, but thankfully he wrote to me.

I’m an MD. He has only a high school education. I’m from just outside Chicago, grew up liberal, and have traveled the world.

He’s a former independent dairy farmer who still lives on the farm he was born on, is very conservative, and only been out of his state twice to adjacent states for maybe a total of 10 days in his entire childhood and 36 years of farming. We lived nearly two hours apart when we met and now live just an hour apart. We spend eight to 12 days a month together and talk every day.

We live closer, but we’re in different states, and I want to keep my medical license and not go through the hassle of getting licensed in another state. I love and need to dance, ballroom Latin swing, and he’d still be afraid he’d be too awkward. And yet we’re blissfully happy together, both being loved correctly for the first time in our lives.

There’s total acceptance in both directions. I feel completely seen, heard, and understood. He feels completely accepted, appreciated, and admired.

I can’t tell you what that means when people use my words. I can’t describe it. Of course, we have common interests.

We never stop having fun with each other. Lots of playful teasing and flirting, even though we almost never go out. I probably had one out of 10 physical attraction for him initially, but it didn’t take long for me to be unable to keep my hands off of him after an entire adult life of next to no libido to really enjoy our frequent and fantastic sex life.

We never fight. Of course, we’ve had some disagreements and issues to resolve. Our love has only grown deeper, and I anticipate we’ll be together forever.

I can’t thank you enough for all you taught and all that I passed on to my daughter, who got out of a non-accepting relationship and is now a great one, and to my 23-year-old son, who has a history of dating women he tries to rescue and is now understanding why that will never work. Feel free to use that as a testimonial. Marnie, I’m sorry I can’t do a very good job of quitting these women’s words.

I’ve always been a crier, so I just got to plow my way through this one. There’s two more. Dear Evan, thanks for the work you do, not only the brilliant content, but also the way you process love with people.

You are real, kind, honest, and nuanced. You’re fun and creative and passionate in your podcasts and writings. I’m going to power through, I swear.

I’m married to the love of my life because your work created synchronicity for me to meet the man I hoped for. In brief, I was married for 25 years to a successful and unkind man. Nonetheless, I got out and thrived.

Dating, however, was a terrifying new experience. I have 15 children, 10 adopted from hard places. I’m a trauma counselor and instructor at a university.

I’m busy and passionate about the work I do, but love has been something I’d always believed was possible. I listened and read a lot, found your podcast. In fact, I think I’ve listened to all of your podcasts since I began a few years ago.

I never joined coaching because I didn’t need to. Your advice simply works. I try to do exactly what you said on the apps, including winding my lens, thinking outside the box, engaging at the right level, focusing 30 minutes a day, staying open even through dates with guys who didn’t interest me and allowing the progression.

Within six months, I met a man who did it right. He loved me, pursued me, and married me. We’ve been married for over a year.

I never thought I would find the one, especially since I have a big career and lots of kiddos. He not only loves me, but appreciates it all. Of course, we have the normal relationship challenges, but love is the foundation, and mutual admiration lays the guardrails.

I’ve never experienced this kind of love. It’s the joy of my life, so I wanted to say thank you. Your work works.

If only people will listen and try. Today, I still listen to every podcast. The relationship advice works, whether married or dating.

I pass on the dating information to my friends and clients, because after trauma, people still want to find the love of their life. Thank you, Evan. Thank you for what you do.

I know you know it matters, but wow, it truly does. If I can do anything to support you during this time, let me know. Jodi.

And then the last one. Hi, Evan. You may remember me, one of your earlier clients, now happily paired for 14 years.

I still read your emails and recommend them to others who could benefit. This just hit me as if it came from a close friend. I was so sorry to read about your wife.

I’m not good with words to express my wishes for you, but I want to tell you, I’ll be thinking about you and your wife, sending all the good vibes I can muster. I hope you’ll continue to send emails like this to keep the people who care about you posted on her progress. With Karen, Ruth, 14 years ago, Ruth was 75 when she came to me for help.

She got married, actually, with my help at age 75. She’s now 89 years old. I just can’t express how grateful I am to have done this work and to have real people sending me love back.

I just can’t describe it any other way. So I know you’re aware of this, anybody who’s made it this far into the podcast, but I think it’s important for me to say that yes, cancer is overwhelming and it’s unpredictable, but it’s the thing that has clarified the meaning of everything I’ve done for 20 years and how I so much enjoy this work and helping other people get the thing that I have that’s making me cry. So right now, right this second, I’ve got three clients who signed up with me in February who are graduating six months of LoveU with boyfriends.

So cancer, big, crazy, unpredictable, I can’t control that. The thing I can control is this, what I do every day, and my work doesn’t stop because my wife has cancer. This is what I’m diving into.

This is the thing that I’m most passionate about. So if you could get past the tears and you really want help finding something special like the women who wrote to me today, go to evanmarkatz.com/now to book a time to talk to me next week after our little family vacation when I’m back from that trip and I’m going to dive back into my work and give all of my love to my clients. That’s what I’m here for.

That’s the meaning of life. I swear. It’s the meaning of life.

Just minutes ago, I created a CaringBridge link to keep people updated on my wife’s situation. I’ve been told it’s what people do. I’ve never done it before.

I just threw one thing on there. So if you’re curious about how we’re doing and you don’t want to be bored by tears in every podcast, I highly recommend that you check out the link that we probably put in the show notes if I do it right. In the meantime, thank you for bearing with me and these tears.

I wish I was able to talk without tears. I’m a pretty good writer, but man, I just can’t get through emotional speeches. I just can’t do it.

So thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of it, and I’ll see you really soon.

Take care.