The beginning of 2026 was supposed to mark an entirely new chapter for Will Reeve.
On January 17, the ABC News correspondent and youngest son of the late Christopher Reeve married Amanda Dubin in Miami, surrounded by family and friends. The photographs from their wedding showed a couple at the beginning of married life: laughing, dancing and celebrating a future they had spent years imagining together. ABC News
Only a few months later, that future suddenly felt much less certain.
Will, now 34, has revealed that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in April — a diagnosis he quietly faced through surgeries and chemotherapy before finally telling the public about what had happened. ABC News
A Wedding Followed by News Neither Expected
Will and Amanda’s wedding took place at Miami’s Rubell Museum after the couple became engaged in November 2024. Their celebration stretched across a weekend and included Will’s siblings, Matthew Reeve and Alexandra Reeve Givens, as well as several of his Good Morning America colleagues.
For Will, there were also quiet reminders of the parents who could not be there.
Christopher Reeve died in 2004, when Will was 12. His mother, Dana Reeve, died from lung cancer less than two years later, leaving Will orphaned at 13.
Yet the wedding photographs were overwhelmingly joyful.
Then, approximately three months after the wedding, Will noticed something unusual.
While showering in April, he felt a hard, tender lump in his left testicle. His first instinct was not panic. He initially thought it might simply disappear.
It didn’t.
Amanda encouraged her husband to have it examined, and after several weeks, Will underwent an ultrasound. Doctors discovered a mass. People.com
Suddenly, the newlyweds were confronting something neither had expected.
The Diagnosis Was Testicular Cancer
Will underwent surgery in May to remove the affected testicle. Testing then revealed the diagnosis: the tumor was predominantly embryonal carcinoma, an aggressive form of testicular cancer. People.com
But treatment wasn’t finished.
Doctors subsequently found that cancer had reached lymph nodes in his abdomen. In June, Will underwent another operation — this one lasting approximately six hours — during which dozens of lymph nodes were removed. Three were found to contain cancer. People.com
That result meant chemotherapy would be necessary.
And throughout it all, Amanda remained beside him.
Their First Year of Marriage Became Something Entirely Different
Instead of spending their first summer as newlyweds settling into ordinary married life, Will and Amanda found themselves spending long days at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Will underwent two cycles of chemotherapy during July, with sessions lasting as long as nine hours. Amanda accompanied him through treatment. The Independent
Will has since admitted that one of the hardest parts wasn’t simply what was happening to his own body.
It was worrying about what his illness was doing to the people he loved.
After publicly revealing his diagnosis, he spoke about struggling with the fear that he might become a burden to Amanda and the rest of his family. He has also described his wife as an essential source of support throughout treatment. EW.com
There was another layer to the experience that made the hospital particularly emotional for him.
It was the same institution where his mother had once been treated for cancer.
Returning to the Hospital Where His Mother Was Treated
Dana Reeve was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 despite being a nonsmoker. She died in March 2006 at only 44.
Two decades later, her son was walking through Memorial Sloan Kettering as a cancer patient himself.
There was even an extraordinary connection to Dana’s own treatment: her former oncologist visited Will regularly while he was receiving care. Will later described those visits as deeply meaningful. People.com
The parallels between generations were impossible to ignore.
His father, Christopher, had spent nearly a decade living with paralysis after a 1995 equestrian accident. Dana became his partner and caregiver while also raising their son. Together, Christopher and Dana became prominent advocates for spinal-cord injury research before their deaths.
Now their son was facing his own medical crisis.
The Son Christopher Reeve Left Behind
Will was born in 1992, three years before the accident that changed his father’s life.
Christopher Reeve had already become internationally famous as Superman, beginning with the 1978 film, but the image Will knew at home was naturally different from the superhero remembered by movie audiences.
After Christopher’s accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, Will grew up watching both of his parents adapt to circumstances they never could have anticipated.
That history became important during his own treatment.
Will has said that the way his parents responded to adversity influenced how he approached his cancer diagnosis and ultimately his decision to discuss it publicly. EW.com
One Question Became Especially Personal: Could He Still Become a Father?
Cancer treatment also forced Will and Amanda to think much earlier than expected about another part of their future.
Children.
Because testicular-cancer treatment can affect fertility, Will took steps to preserve his ability to have children by banking sperm before treatment. He has since spoken openly about wanting to become a father someday. EW.com
That hope surfaced again when he spoke with other men who had experienced testicular cancer.
One conversation about becoming a father after cancer became particularly emotional for him. After everything that had happened during his first months of marriage, the possibility of building a family with Amanda clearly remained part of the future he was fighting to protect. EW.com
Then Came the News They Had Been Waiting For
After surgery, recovery and chemotherapy, Will returned for follow-up testing.
On September 8, he received the result he had been hoping for:
There was no evidence of cancer.
Will is currently cancer-free, although he will continue undergoing regular surveillance. People.com
When he finally revealed his diagnosis publicly on September 29, he made one thing clear from the beginning: he was okay.
The announcement wasn’t simply about telling people what had happened. Will said he hoped sharing his experience might encourage other men not to dismiss changes in their bodies and to seek medical attention when something feels unusual. ABC News
His own experience demonstrated exactly why.
The small lump he initially assumed might disappear led to an ultrasound, surgery and the discovery of an aggressive cancer.
Amanda Was There From the Very Beginning
There is another detail that makes their wedding photographs feel different now.
When Will and Amanda stood together in Miami in January, neither could have known what their first year of marriage would bring.
Three months later, Amanda was the person encouraging him to have the lump checked. She was there through the diagnosis. She remained beside him through surgery and the exhausting hours of chemotherapy.
And by September, she was beside him on the other side of it.
A Very Different Kind of Reeve Family Story
Will has spent his entire life carrying a surname associated with an unusual mixture of Hollywood fame, devastating loss and extraordinary resilience.
To the world, Christopher Reeve was Superman.
To Will, he was simply his father.
And Dana wasn’t merely the woman who stood beside Christopher after his accident. She was his mother — the parent who raised him until cancer took her life when he was still a teenager.
Twenty years later, Will found himself hearing the word “cancer” attached to his own name.
This time, however, the story has reached a very different ending.
At 34, newly married and looking toward the possibility of becoming a father himself, Will has emerged from treatment cancer-free. His RARE PHOTOS with Christopher and Dana, alongside the joyful images from his wedding to Amanda, now connect three very different chapters of the same family story: the childhood he lost too soon, the marriage that gave him a new family, and the health battle that tested that new beginning almost immediately. People.com
And perhaps the most powerful part is that Will chose not to keep the experience private forever.
He turned what had been one of the most frightening periods of his life into something his parents had taught him to value: a story that might help somebody else.
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