Finding the Magic, Just in Time (Encore)

Summary

Modern Love – “Finding the Magic, Just in Time (Encore)”

Host: Anna Martin
Guest: Claire Corey
Release Date: December 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode presents the remarkable love story of Claire Corey, whose journey traverses decades of longing, heartbreak, resilience, and unexpected romance later in life. Host Anna Martin revisits one of her favorite stories from the Modern Love archive, examining how love can surprise us at any age and in the most unforeseen circumstances— even in the midst of mortality. Claire’s narrative is at once poignant and joyful, offering listeners a meditation on hope, acceptance, and the “magic” we crave in relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Childhood Dreams of Love

• Growing up as the eldest of seven on a Montana farm, Claire dreamt of romance from a young age, imagining her future husband as she gazed at the moon from her couch-bed in a crowded trailer.
  • Quote: “I envisioned that somewhere out there under that same moon, was the man for me.” (01:22, Claire)

2. Early Heartbreaks

• Claire became engaged to Roger after college, only for him to call off the wedding unexpectedly, claiming later, “We were missing the magic.”
  • Quote: “He said, do you know what we were missing? … We were missing the magic. We didn’t have the magic.” (07:42, Roger via Claire)
• She then met Don at a professional training, which sparked a brief romance described as her “best days.” But distance and life led them to drift apart.

3. Letting Go and Choosing Herself

• After a series of relationships and heartbreaks, Claire focused on her career and self-fulfillment, coming to peace with a single life.
  • Quote: “It felt like I had been beating my head against a wall for years trying to…make this relationship thing happen…Why are you beating your head all the time? …you’re missing living. You’re missing life itself.” (11:57, Claire)
• She describes coming to terms with being single: “Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it.” (13:12, Claire)

4. A Life-Changing Diagnosis

• At 52, Claire was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, later progressing to stage 4.
  • Quote: “What happened was my life went from looking a decade or more ahead to looking a day at a time.” (15:40, Claire)
• The diagnosis taught her profound appreciation: “I have fallen in love with Life itself…I’m willing to fight for it with all I got because I just. I love it so much.” (19:02, Claire)

5. The Most Unexpected Turn: Romance Returns

• Years after accepting her single status and amid cancer treatment, Claire reconnected with Don—the same Don from her past.
  • A chance dinner led to her inviting him to a Christmas party, marking the start of renewed affection and support.
  • Quote: “At the most unexpected time in my life, when I don't feel good about my body and I cannot imagine that anybody is going to find me attractive…Suddenly and very unexpectedly, I did find romance again.” (22:23, Claire)

6. Building a New Relationship—Mortality and Magic

• Their relationship blossomed in parallel with her cancer journey. They moved beyond old fears, with Don committing to move closer and support Claire.
  • Their budding romance included whimsical moments (fixing up his new house, “mortuary dates”) and everyday tenderness.
  • Quote: “I was putting up a shower curtain in his vacant bathroom on Valentine's Day… But that is exactly what happened.” (27:33, Claire)

7. Love, Loss, and the Present Moment

• With uncertain timeframes ahead, Claire and Don focus on the joy of the present.
  • Quote: “It's not like we're building a relationship to last through decades, because we're not likely to have decades. And so really, it's about today.” (36:58, Claire)
• They savor simple “normal couple things,” like sharing meals and sunsets.
  • Quote: “We've seen some beautiful sunsets together and watched the moon rise…Just a very new experience for me.” (37:44, Claire)

8. Facing Death with Grace, Not Fear

• Claire reflects openly on mortality, drawing strength from the community of others who live with (and die from) metastatic breast cancer, committed to approaching her end with grace for the sake of her loved ones and herself.
  • Quote: “I hope that I can do it gracefully. And I hope that, well, geez, I really hope that I won't disappoint anybody and let anybody down, because I really do want to keep living.” (40:42, Claire)

9. Full Circle: Reading Her Modern Love Essay

• Claire reads the essay that first introduced her story; written before Don’s return, it’s now layered with new meaning.
  • Quote:
    “Once I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. He said we were missing the magic. And admittedly, he was right…
    I’m now 59 with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don’t have a partner, but I’ve fallen desperately in love with life. Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere…
    Not yet, I whisper to the heavens. I love it here.” (41:21, Claire reads her essay)

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Notable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “We were missing the magic. We didn’t have the magic.” – Claire recounting Roger’s words (07:42)
• “Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it.” – Claire on surrendering expectation (13:12)
• “I have fallen in love with Life itself.” – Claire after her terminal diagnosis (19:02)
• “At the most unexpected time in my life… I did find romance again. And it happened to be Don.” (22:23)
• “He wasn’t here yet. And he said, look, could you go pick up the keys for me?... I was putting up a shower curtain in his vacant bathroom on Valentine’s Day.” (27:17 – 27:33)
• “We didn’t have a conversation on the bench, but I felt it and I knew it… And I said, well, let’s just see if we can make it 90 days.” (30:01 – 30:33)
• “It’s not worth it to walk around with a closed heart.” (34:39, Claire)
• “It’s way more fun than I actually thought.” – Claire on sharing everyday life with Don (36:18)
• “It’s about today.” – Claire on being present in love (36:58)
• “Not yet. I whisper to the heavens. I love it here.” (41:36, reading from her essay)
• Update: “Don is the home of my heart.” (43:35, Claire via Anna Martin)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Early Dreams & First Heartbreak: 01:22 – 09:39
• Letting Go / Acceptance of Singlehood: 10:17 – 14:39
• Cancer Diagnosis and New Perspective: 15:29 – 20:14
• Unexpected Romance with Don: 22:23 – 34:39
• Present-Moment Love / Facing Mortality: 36:13 – 40:42
• Reading the Modern Love Essay: 41:21 – 42:37
• Host’s Update (Claire and Don Married!): 43:13 – 43:35

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Tone & Takeaway

Warm, open-hearted, and refreshingly candid, this episode is a testament to the irrevocable hope in human hearts and the many forms magic can take. Claire’s story urges listeners to value self-acceptance, presence, and the subtle beauty of everyday life, while also remaining open to the surprises love may still deliver—no matter when, or how, it arrives.

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For listeners seeking hope, comfort, and proof that it is never too late for magic, this episode offers just that—right on time.

Transcript

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[Anna Martin]

Hey, everyone, it's Anna. All right, today, I want to bring back one of my favorite episodes. We recorded this almost a year ago, and I still think about it all the time. Make sure you listen all the way to the end because we've got a very sweet update for you.

[Claire Corey]

Love now.

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[Claire Corey]

Love was stronger than anything for the love love and I love you more than anything. There's to love love.

[Anna Martin]

From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Each week we bring you stories inspired by the Modern Love column. We talk about love, lust, heartbreak, and all the messiness of relationships. When Claire Corey was a young girl growing up on a farm in Montana, she. She dreamed about falling in love.

[Claire Corey]

We lived in a single wide trailer. It was a little bit crowded, so I slept on the couch. And I would often look out the window at the full moon. And it's very beautiful. And I would watch the moon sail across the sky. And me being the hopeless romantic child that I was, I envisioned that somewhere out there under that same moon, was the man for me.

[Anna Martin]

Just after she graduated college, Claire got engaged. But then right before the wedding, her fiance called it off. After that, she spent years, decades, even, trying to make various relationships work. But none of them did. So eventually, she stopped worrying about it and decided to focus on her career. After her 50th birthday, she looked back on her life and felt happy.

[Claire Corey]

You know, you think, wow, I've come a long way in life and I still have a long way to go.

[Anna Martin]

That feeling led Claire to write into the Modern Love column saying she'd finally fallen in love, but not with some guy. Instead, it was a love for life itself. She thought maybe her love story was over.

[Claire Corey]

But then the most improbable, bizarre series of events occurred.

[Anna Martin]

Some of those bizarre events were scary. Her health took a dramatic turn. But some were beautiful beyond anything she could have ever imagined. Today, we tell you the rest of Claire's love story. Stick with us.

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[Claire Corey]

This looks like a little pink poodle. They look huddle. What if I took Vietnamese coffee and made that into a cookie? These are deluxe cookies. The sour candy is crazy. What? It's absolutely unhinged, but completely delicious. It smells so good.

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[Anna Martin]

Now for a limited time offer. Claire Corey, welcome to Modern Love.

[Claire Corey]

Thank you so much and I really appreciate this opportunity.

[Anna Martin]

So, Claire, we're here to talk about your love story. There are twists, there are turns, things do not go as you expect. But I want to start at the beginning. When you were a kid growing up, you dreamed about falling in love. Paint a picture of that for me.

[Claire Corey]

Yeah, so I'm the oldest of seven children and we grew up on a little farm in Montana. So I remember a lot of thoughts of romance rolling through my brain in those early years. And my sister and I, we were out on our fake horses, you know, that we had made out of sticks. Our stick horses, basically, of course. And so we both had husbands along for the ride, and mine was Jim and hers was Steve. And so I just imagined that one day, you know, I was going to be riding around in a truck with Jim and we were going to have a happily ever after.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, I know that years later when you were in your 20s, you did have a brief engagement to a man. His name was not Jim, his name was Roger. But that engagement didn't work out. Tell me, what did you love about Roger?

[Claire Corey]

Oh, Roger was just a ton of fun. He was always laughing, and he was always up for adventure. He was very funny. And we were in very different fields. He's in engineering, and I was in psychology. But we supported one another through grad school. And so, you know, I thought. I felt like we were really good together. We were really solid. You know, I believed that we would grow old together.

[Anna Martin]

Where did that certainty come from?

[Claire Corey]

Good question, because apparently I was wrong. So our wedding was scheduled in May, and we had spent a lot of time preparing for that. And so we had everything lined up, and at the end of March, Roger woke up in the middle of the night, and he said, I can't do this. I said, what do you mean? You can't do what? And he said, well, you know, I can't get married. I can't go through with this wedding. And that began a whole lot of, shall we say, painful discussions about why. And I never got a really good answer as to why until a year later when we actually met in a park because I was going to sell the dress. I actually ended up giving it to somebody, but we met in a park. And I said, do you want to see the dress? And so I pulled the dress out, and he said, oh, my gosh. He said, it's so beautiful. And he said, do you know what we were missing? And I was like, no. And he said we were missing the magic. We didn't have the magic.

[Anna Martin]

Did you know what he meant when he said we were missing the magic? Did that track for you?

[Claire Corey]

It did, to some degree, yes. I mean, to some degree. I was still trying to understand what had gone wrong. But, yeah, I did, because in between that time, I actually had met Don.

[Anna Martin]

Okay, who's Don? Who's he?

[Claire Corey]

So I went to a training, and the trainer was a man named Don. And so I remember I'm a shy person, but I did approach him at the training to ask him a question about something, and we had a brief little conversation. And I didn't think much of it, but I thought, oh, wow, that's a really cool guy. But I think it was the training was a couple days, and so when the training ended, I remember he said something to me and. And he said, hey, do you want to get together for dinner sometime? And we had a lot in common. We work in similar Fields, we just had a very deep connection. And I've often said to people that it was the best days of my life.

[Anna Martin]

And what were you thinking as that was happening? Did you feel like those were the best days?

[Claire Corey]

What I thought to myself was, oh, now I understand. This is why the relationship with Roger didn't work out. Because actually the real person for me, the real. The man who really was the one for me, was still out there and I just hadn't met him yet. And so that's how that romance began, which was a wonderful romance, but was also a brief romance.

[Anna Martin]

Can you tell me why it ended? Why did you guys stop being in contact or seeing each other?

[Claire Corey]

It was complicated by a lot of things. You know, I was traveling a lot and I had my job. And so it ended basically by lack of communication and letters. Again, this is in the days before email and cell phones and that kind of thing. So I remember writing him a letter and saying how hurt that I was. And I then was very depressed.

[Anna Martin]

Did you try to get back out there dating wise at this time, or was that not at all a priority?

[Claire Corey]

No, it was not. I was way too broken hearted to even think about that. And, you know, here I thought that I had found the answer to the whole reason why my relationship with Roger hadn't worked out. And now I really had found a relationship that was magical. And then it ended. And I really felt like, how could this happen to me twice?

[Anna Martin]

These two heartbreaks relatively close to each other, almost back to back in the grand scheme. Did you feel your heart harden? Were you like, that's it, I'm not doing this anymore, it's not worth it?

[Claire Corey]

I would say at that time, no, I was not ready to be done. It took probably another decade or so. And in the intervening years, I did have some men in my life who were truly good men. But the relationships didn't last. I would say maybe by the time I was in my mid-40s and I really started asking myself, what are you trying to do here? You know, looking back, I can see that my life shifted tracks at that time from a future that was about creating marriage and a family and a home, to my being more of a career person, focused on my career and not so much a relationship.

[Anna Martin]

What were some of the things you were telling yourself that made you okay with this new version of your future, this version where you wouldn't find someone? How did it become all right?

[Claire Corey]

Well, because I had to ask myself, what are you missing in your life? You know, I have a lot of good things in my life. And my life is going along very well. And, yeah, I sort of had this empty spot in my heart or this empty place in my heart where I felt like a relationship would fill it up. But I thought, is something really missing in your life? And as I started looking around, I thought, I'm very content with where I am and who I am, and no, there's really nothing missing at all. And it felt like I had been beating my head against a wall for years trying to figure out how to make this relationship thing happen. And at some point you think, wait a minute, why are you beating your head all the time? Is this really worth it? And what are you missing when you're not beating your head? Well, you're missing living. You're missing life itself.

[Anna Martin]

Did you ever feel lonely, though?

[Claire Corey]

No.

[Anna Martin]

Really? Really?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah. I've never felt lonely, and maybe that's because I have a lot of siblings and friends and things. No, I did not feel lonely. Did I miss having a romantic partner in my life? Yes.

[Anna Martin]

Huh.

[Claire Corey]

You know, and I just want to, you know, be clear that this was not an easy process. Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it. So I can say that this was this idea of fulfilling romantic relationship had claw marks all over it. It was clawed to pieces before I could let go of it. Yeah. So, yeah.

[Anna Martin]

And when you did let this claw marked thing go, Was it liberating?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah, absolutely. And I realized that there is a freedom in that and that I did feel liberated because I'm like, hey, I don't need to be looking for anybody. But it was hard to put hope back in the basket and shut the basket. Hope, hope of having a romance, Hope of having that fulfilling relationship that I'd always dreamed of. And I just stuffed it in the basket and shut the lid. But every now and again, you know, hope, it just keeps coming, and it would, you know, stick its head out of the basket and be waving at me. I'm like, get back in there. Shut that thing.

[Anna Martin]

When you hit this, kind of coming to terms with being single for the rest of your life, kind of putting hope in the basket for the rest of your life, this hope for a romantic partner, you know, did you take a look back on your life at that point and assess it, and if so, what did you see?

[Claire Corey]

Well, I remember the year that I turned 50 was also the first time I ever traveled to Europe, and my brother and his wife were living in Germany, and my mom and I went to Europe, and that was a dream that I'd always had. And I remember thinking that, you know, my life was very full, things were good, and I was looking forward to a future that, you know, that seemed wide open with possibility. You know, not the possibility necessarily, because, again, hope is, you know, stay in the basket hope. All right, But a future of, you know, continuing to work and, you know, someday I was going to, you know, retire. And what was I going to do then? And, you know, I had goals for myself. Pay off my house, you know, those kinds of things. 50 was a beautiful time.

[Anna Martin]

And then just after you turned 52, you found out you have a rare type of breast cancer.

[Claire Corey]

Yes.

[Anna Martin]

What was that moment like for you?

[Claire Corey]

Well, it changes your life forever. There's no doubt about it. It's the most aggressive form of breast cancer. It's called inflammatory breast cancer. And so I knew then that my life was contract. What happened was my life went from looking a decade or more ahead to looking a day at a time.

[Anna Martin]

Claire, when you got this diagnosis, what did that change for you?

[Claire Corey]

You know, it's really interesting because I learned a lot about myself. You really don't know how you'll react until those situations happen. So I said a couple things to myself. Well, I'm just gonna keep working until I can't anymore, and I'm gonna keep exercising until I can't anymore, and I'll just keep doing what I'm doing until I can't anymore. So, you know, they scheduled chemo in such a way that your down days would be on the weekend. So I was able to continue working, and I'd go to chemo and go to work and, you know, come down on the weekend and get by Sunday afternoon, I was coming back up.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, you're saying all of this like it's just a routine. You know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. But there had to be hard parts of this.

[Claire Corey]

Oh, yeah, there are hard parts of it. Inflammatory breast cancer is a beast. It's a challenge. And I will say this. Inflammatory breast cancer, your breast enlarges the cancer, turns the breast cancer purple. It was hard as a rock. I could feel it turning hard. It's ugly, and you have to walk around with it every single day. And so you start to realize that today is all that you've got. And if today is all that I've got, then I damn well better make this a good day, because I'm not giving up what I got right now. And so what happened is that I realized that I have fallen in love with Life itself. And I remember the day that I found out that I had progressed to stage four. I came home and I opened the door to my house and I looked around at all my possessions and I thought, wow, somebody's going to have to come in and give all of these things away. And so I started to look around at all the things that I was going to miss. And I thought, wow, I'm really going to miss that sunrise. I'm going to miss that sunset. Going to miss my colleagues at work. I'm going to miss my nieces and nephews growing up. That's still a hard one for me. I'm going to miss just these everyday moments of where you're, you know, taking a walk and there's a beautiful flower, you run into somebody. Just so many things like that. I had a friend who was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and she's passed away now. But she said to me, if I could turn back time and change this, I wouldn't. She said, it's given me too much. And I'm crying and crying and saying, how can you say that? I'm sure I'll never feel that way. But if I could turn back time, I wouldn't change it. It's given me too much. It's given me an appreciation for life. You know, I got out of the hospital in September and for various reasons, they hadn't let me take a shower. And, oh, my God, I came home and jumped in the shower. I was able to get in my car and drive my car to work. And I thought, this is one of the best days of my life, you know, and I'm showered. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's not like I don't get frustrated or upset or sad about things, because I do. But I've become more at peace with knowing that my life will end. But that also gives me the freedom to know how much I love this life and how much I love being alive. And I'm willing to fight for it with all I got because I just. I love it so much.

[Anna Martin]

When we come back, Claire's life takes a totally unexpected turn towards romance. Stay with us.

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[Nick Kristof]

This is Nick Kristof. I'm an opinion columnist for the New York Times, and I'm proud that for more than 100 years, the Times has conducted an annual appeal to raise money for charitable organizations. Times journalism is fundamentally about vetting the truth, and in this case, about vetting organizations and selecting some of the best to help create opportunity and overcome hardship. I hope you'll consider donating to the New York Times Communities Fund. To learn more, go to nytimes.com nytfund thank you.

[Anna Martin]

Claire. All through your 30s and 40s, you were hoping you'd fall in love. And then in your 50s, you're facing terminal cancer. And it sounds like you did find love, just not how you expected. You found this love for life. And I feel like I can see the headline now. It's like, woman falls in love with Life. Which would be a beautiful end to your story, except it's not the end to your story, right?

[Claire Corey]

Yes, that is correct. So my heart was completely full. I want to say that because I have found a love for life, but at the most unexpected time in my life when I don't feel good about my body and I cannot imagine that anybody is going to find me attractive, certainly as a romantic partner. Suddenly and very unexpectedly, I did find romance again. And it happened to be. Dawn.

[Anna Martin]

It happened to be a guy we've heard about before. Dawn, remind us who Don is to you.

[Claire Corey]

So Don was a person that I had a relationship with 27 years ago, and I was completely heartbroken when it ended, but I had gone on and, you know, made my peace with that. Yeah. And, you know, I'm a kind of person who, you know, always stays friends with people. And so we work in similar fields and we were in one another's orbit, but we didn't talk very much, maybe a couple times a year. I do remember I called him when I found out that I had cancer and let him know.

[Anna Martin]

So when did Don come back into the picture? Like, how long after your diagnosis? Also, I just want to note for the listeners out there that every time I say his name, you smile in this beautiful way that lights you up, and it's lighting me up, too. How long after your diagnosis did he reenter your life?

[Claire Corey]

Well, it was one year ago. And by this time, I'm well into a stage four situation. Stage four metastatic breast cancer. And so that's not exactly the kind of thing you put on your dating profile. You know, a little Tough. You know, what had happened was he was going to be in Phoenix for a conference. He said, oh, well, geez, we ought to get together for dinner. You know, I haven't seen him for a long time. And so we did. We had a nice little dinner, whatever. And when I said goodbye to him, I honestly thought to myself, I'll probably never see him again. I think that this is it. But then this really weird thing happened, and it's kind of a little bit embarrassing, but. So my employer was having the employee Christmas party, and I have gone alone to every single employee event for years. And so I thought, you know what? I want to go with somebody that I would enjoy going with. And I'm just. I would like to just go once to the employee Christmas party with somebody. And I remember I was driving to work, and it popped into my head to ask him to go with me. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because he doesn't even live in the same state. But it just kept bugging me and bugging me. And so I have to say that I felt like a high school girl, you know, Sadie Hawkins dance or whatever, you know, when you call and you ask the guy to go with you. And so I called him up and I said, you know, you know, I've always wanted to go to the Christmas party with somebody, and would you go with me? You know, and, you know, it's in a few weeks. And he said, yeah, sure. And we had this great time.

[Anna Martin]

Was it everything you'd hoped for?

[Claire Corey]

I like a lot of glitter and sparkle, and you get a lot of that on Christmas, you know. And our employee Christmas party was held at this really lovely hotel, and it was full of all the lights and all the sparkle. And I just. I don't know, I'm just. I'm just a fan of that kind of thing. And so it was just really fun to go with him and to be in this beautiful place and, you know, to have this experience. And the next day we met up for breakfast. And so he starts saying to me, you know, he's been having. He's older than I am, and he'd been having a few health issues of his own. He said, you know, I think I'm going to be moving. And I said, oh. And he mentioned a few possible places, and Arizona was one of them. And I said, well, why would you want to go anywhere else? And I was kind of joking with him, you know. Well, about a month, six weeks later, I hear, well, I'm going to move To Arizona.

[Anna Martin]

So how did you react when you got that news? That's kind of like great news.

[Claire Corey]

Yeah, I was. Well, I was shocked. I was completely shocked because I. I wasn't sure he was really serious, you know, I said, well, look, I'll help you look for a place, and, you know, I'm here for you, you know. And so he rented a house and he wasn't here yet. And he said, look, could you go pick up the keys for me? And I said, oh, yeah, I'll do that. And then I got this idea. And I said, you know what? I should get him a few things for when he gets here. That is so sweet. So that, you know, you know, when you move in and you don't have anything, you know, Right.

[Anna Martin]

Clara, you got a lot going on. You got a lot going on. You have your full time job, you have your treatment, you have your own health. It means something that you saw this empty house and you were like, you know what? Amidst my full schedule, I think I'm gonna go out and buy him a blender or whatever you got him, you know.

[Claire Corey]

Well, it was kind of like that. And my cousin has said to me since, oh, yeah, you know, going to fix up a guy's house before he moves in, yeah, you think that's just platonic, right? But it did come to pass that I was putting up a shower curtain in his vacant bathroom on Valentine's Day. No way. And he wasn't in town. And I said to myself, how crazy is this? And so. But that is exactly what happened.

[Anna Martin]

It's clear you and don't are reconnecting in a friendship way. When did you start. When did it start to become romantic? Was there a time you can point to where you were like, oh, there's more here than just two old friends, you know, coming back into each other's lives?

[Claire Corey]

Well, ironically, it was about a week or two after my story was published, which is, you know, about being single. But we got this idea to go to this. It's called the Butterfly Wonderland, I think is what it's called. But we went and it is actually. It's just such a lovely place. And there's just butterflies everywhere. And it's beautiful. There's flowers and greenery. It's a very lush sort of place compared to everywhere else in Arizona. And I felt. Felt this energy start to shift. And I'm like saying to myself, what is happening here? What is going on? There is something happening. And I now I felt like there was a door starting to open and I wasn't going to be able to shut it. And perhaps the old me would have said, I'm not walking through that because of all the complications and the messiness of it, because it was going to be messy. Truthfully, we're both in the. Probably the final seasons of our life because he is older than I am, and of course, I have stage four cancer. And so the door opened and I felt like I had to walk through it.

[Anna Martin]

When you say you felt the energy shift, like there was a door opening, did you have what we call a kind of like, define the relationship conversation? Did you turn to him on that bench and say, clearly, something's happening. We should talk about it?

[Claire Corey]

Well, I wish I could say I was that mature, but apparently I'm not.

[Anna Martin]

Stuff never gets mature.

[Claire Corey]

So. No, we didn't. Yeah, no, I'm still in high school, but. So we didn't have a conversation on the pension, but I felt it and I knew it. But later, within a day or two, we did. And I said, well, let's just see if we can make it 90 days. So he keeps joking with me that we keep. Okay, 90 more days and 90 more days. I said, well, what if we're not speaking to each other in 90 days? So I said, well, let's just give it a go and see what happens.

[Anna Martin]

Do you guys eat dinner together most nights?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah, we do.

[Anna Martin]

Is he cooking for you?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah. And I'm kind of ashamed to say that I've never cooked for him once, but, no, he's been cooking a lot. Yeah.

[Anna Martin]

What does Don make you?

[Claire Corey]

Oh, I love his sloppy joes.

[Anna Martin]

Yum.

[Claire Corey]

And then kielbasa and sauerkraut. I can't help. I'm coming over, you know, so. Yeah, so those are my two favorites that he makes. But. And then he makes me breakfast and peeling oranges for me and things like that. I can't explain it. I don't know how this happened. Right after we got back together in June, I already had an existing appointment to go to the mortuary and make my funeral arrangements.

[Anna Martin]

Oh, my gosh.

[Claire Corey]

And so we had barely gotten back together, and I said, well, I've got an appointment in the mortuary. Do you want to come with me?

[Anna Martin]

Mortuary dates?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah. So pretty much our first, quote, date was going to the mortuary.

[Anna Martin]

Tell me that he also took you to, like, dinner or something. It wasn't just mortuary dates. Like, tell me that you also went to, like, a nice Italian restaurant.

[Claire Corey]

Oh, yeah, well, we, you know, in fact, yes, we've had My sisters are like, only you. That's just the way that you would roll, you know?

[Anna Martin]

I mean, I'm thinking about how, you know, you. This was an appointment that you had on the books. Like, you had made this appointment when you were single and handling this stuff yourself. And the thing I really look up to is it's. You're kind of telling him, like, this is my life. I was already doing these things. You are welcome to come along for the ride, basically. And the thing that I find remarkable from his end is he's like, yeah, I'm there.

[Claire Corey]

And that's one of the things that we had about six good weeks.

[Betterment Announcer]

Of.

[Claire Corey]

Things being relatively normal, and then it all crashed, and I got really sick with the flu. And then next thing, I was in the hospital, and the cancers progressed, and I'm looking really bad on paper, and he was staying in the hospital with me and sleeping in a chair, and that bothered me. I'm like, no, I don't want you sleeping in a chair. But my sister came from out of town, and then I said to him, go home and sleep in your own bed for one night. Because by now, he'd been at the hospital with me for probably four or five nights. So he went home, and that was the day that the results of my brain MRI came back. And my sister. We were out walking in the garden at the hospital, and she said, your MRI came back. And I saw from the look on her face, and she said, yeah, you've got a lesion in your brain. And that was the last thing that I wanted to hear. I felt like I could deal with anything but brain metastasis. And I said, well, what does dawn say? Because I kind of figured she had told him already. And we were standing and looking out the window. I remember the elevator door opened, and there he was, like, he came back.

[Anna Martin]

You did so much work in the sort of middle part of your life to move on from your desire to have a romantic partner, and now you have that you have Don. You have a romantic partner. I just want to know, like, what does it feel like to. To open back up that possibility and to let it be fulfilled? What does that feel like?

[Claire Corey]

Well, on the one hand, it's kind of scary because you're opening your heart again. But I also think that, you know, it's not worth it to walk around with a closed heart. It's. It's hard to overstate the importance of that feeling of safety and belonging that I think that we all look for and that I'd probably Been looking for. For so much of my life. And to find that it's a little bit of a, you know, like you're swirling around on a merry go round, going, what just happened here? It's hard to get your head around, too. My life is very different than it was eight months ago, a year ago. It's very different because it's a whole different way than I've been used to living. And we're not living together, but we spend a heck of a lot of time together. And I honestly thought we had this joke that I would be smothered if he was around too much. And so he kept asking me, you know, do you need some alone time? Do you need some alone time? So, much to my utter shock and surprise, I have found that I really. I'm okay with him being here or me being at his place or whatever. I gotta tell you, I'm a little surprised at how much I've enjoyed it. The other night I said, well, I just would have come home and forgotten to eat. And he's like, no, no, we have to make dinner.

[Anna Martin]

I'm making you sloppy joes and you are eating them.

[Claire Corey]

But it's just been a real joy, I think, to share with somebody the ups and downs and just to share in life with somebody. It's way more fun than I actually thought.

[Anna Martin]

You know, a big part of. For most couples, a big part of starting a relationship or being in the early stages of relationship, like you and Don are, is talking about the future, right? And all the time that you're gonna spend with them. What about you and Don? Do you talk about the future?

[Claire Corey]

You know, right now, I'm responding to treatment, and things are going well. That can change very quickly. I'm very aware of that. I hope it doesn't, but it could. And certainly, you know, he's not a young person, and his own health could change very quickly. The truth is that we don't know what kind of future we have, if any. And so I find that I'm not very troubled about who's taken out the trash kind of thing. It's not like we're building a relationship to last through decades, because we're not likely to have decades. And so really, it's about today.

[Anna Martin]

Was there a recent moment where the two of you were together and you thought, like, oh, this is the magic? Like, this is. This is what it is?

[Claire Corey]

Yeah, well, I'd say there's quite a lot of those moments, you know, and maybe they're not the ones that you'd expect, you know, but, you know, we've seen some beautiful sunsets together and watched the moon rise, which was just beautiful watching a full moon rise. And then, you know, I think about, like, I want to have more time for more conversations and more time to do this. And it was nice to do, I guess, what I call sort of normal couples things together. Yeah, it's just a very new experience for me.

[Anna Martin]

I'm gonna assume that when you were first diagnosed and you started thinking about your own death, that looked a certain way to you. And then you meet, don't. And over the past few months, as things have grown and deepened as much as they have, that picture of your passing must look a little different. And I want to know, like, has it changed for you? And if so, how?

[Claire Corey]

You know, I consider myself realistically optimistic, and so I'm optimistic, and I will take every single treatment that they offer me. I will do everything. But I'm also realistic. And so I know that the day may come when there are no more treatments available and that I will have to gracefully. I hope I can gracefully accept that at that time. And I've said, I hope the gods will be kind to me as I leave this world. I also feel that I don't want to let anybody down, my family in particular, and now Don, frankly, by dying, you know, And I feel like, oh, geez, I'm going to put them through a lot. And so I do talk to him about it, and he says, I'm in it with you, and I'll be there regardless. One of the things that I've said to myself since I was first diagnosed with cancer, literally the first week, well, there is millions of other women who have been faced with breast cancer, and if they got through it, I can do it too. There's millions of other women who've had chemo. If they got through it, I can do it, too. There are surgeries, radiation. There are many women living with stage four metastatic breast cancer. If they're doing it, I can do it too. And what's also true is that there are many, many women who have died from stage four metastatic breast cancer. And if did it, well, I can do it too. And I just hope that I can do it gracefully. And I hope that, well, geez, I really hope that I won't disappoint anybody and let anybody down, because I really do want to keep living.

[Anna Martin]

Claire, I do think it speaks to the kind of person you are that when we're talking about your own mortality, the first thing that comes to mind for you is other people. It's the people that you love. And I just want to say I think Don is very lucky to count himself in that group of people who you love. You know, when you wrote in to Modern Love, it was actually before you and Don had reconnected. And I think it might have a different feeling now that we know what happened and after you wrote it. So I wonder if you could read it for us.

[Claire Corey]

I will happily read it. Yeah. Yeah. Who knew what was coming after this? Finally finding the magic. Since childhood, I yearned for love. Once I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. He said we were missing the magic. And admittedly, he was right. A few men came and went. I'm now 59 with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don't have a partner, but I've fallen desperately in love with life. Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere. My cat on my lap. A cashier extending an unexpected smile. Sunlight skipping across a lake I use each day to soak up the world's splendor. Not yet. I whisper to the heavens. I love it here.

[Anna Martin]

Oh, that. That. There's such a new depth to it after our conversation. I mean, it's just remarkable. There's so much I understand, the context and the history and also the chapter that comes after it, which you did not know when this was published. It's just remarkable.

[Claire Corey]

Yes.

[Anna Martin]

Claire, Corey, thank you so much for this conversation. I'm. I'm really, really grateful.

[Claire Corey]

Well, I am as well. It's a delight to speak with you.

[Anna Martin]

All right, here's that update I was promising. It's been about a year since we released this episode, so we reached out to Claire to see how she's doing. Despite everything, she is still working full time and still in love with life. And here's the big news. She and and Don got hitched. Claire says she never thought she would get married, but that life is full of surprises. And she says, quote, don is the home of my heart. The Modern Love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Josa Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Emily Lang, Jen Poyant, Lynn Levy, Reeva Goldberg and Sarah Curtis. This episode was produced by Amy Pearl and Davis Land. It was edited by Jen Poyant. Original music in this episode by Pat McCusker, Roman Nimisto, Marion Lozano, and Dan Powell. Dan also composed our theme music. Our mix engineer is Daniel Ramirez, and we have studio support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of modern love projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we've always got those instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening. What do you think makes the perfect snack?

[AMPM Advertiser]

Hmm. It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

[Claire Corey]

Could you be more specific?

[AMPM Advertiser]

When it's cravinient.

[Claire Corey]

Okay.

[AMPM Advertiser]

Like a freshly baked cookie made with real baked butter, available right down the street at ampm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at ampm.

[Claire Corey]

I'm seeing a pattern here.

[AMPM Advertiser]

Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.

[Claire Corey]

Crave, which is anything from ampm.

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