Former tennis player Corina Morariu, now 45 years old, was struck by a rare form of leukemia (APL, Acute Peomyelocytic Leukemia), a disease that she managed to overcome in an absolutely miraculous way.
Corina Morariu smiles again
Little known in the country, Corina Morariu has a fabulous life story. She is an American whose parents are Romanian. His brother was born in Cluj, and she was born in 1978, in Michigan – Detroit.
The disease blocked his career at the age of 23
The terrible disease broke his tennis career. It was 2001 and she was only 23 years old, an age at which she was already married.
The survival rate of the disease was 60%, but her mind wandered to her grandmother, dead at 80, from a similar form of cancer. 1,500 Americans are diagnosed with APL each year: the number of white blood cells in the blood reaches a minimum threshold, which reduces the body’s ability to resist infection.
Dozens of chemotherapy sessions, as a result of which she lost her hair, intravenous sessions attended by her older brother, Mircea, a neurophysiologist in Florida, after doing his residency at Georgetown in Washington. He is the one who, in case of extreme emergency, can donate bone marrow to Corina for the vital transplant.
Divorced after beating leukemia
A year after returning to the tennis court, in 2003, Corina made a decision that marked her personal life: she divorced her husband and, at the same time, her coach, the Australian of Italian origin Andrew Turcinovich. “It is about another road“, Corina told about the one she married in 1999. Billie Jean King, Monica Seleș, Lindsay Davenport or Mary Joe Fernandez were invited to the wedding.
A former coach of Singapore’s national team, Turcinovich returned to Australia, leaving Corina to change her life after staying by her side in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. After her four years with Andrew, Corina was in a relationship with Justin Gimelstob (2003 – 2007).
Moreover, Corina decided to move away from her family (resident since 1982 in Florida, in Boca Raton, a town where Ion Țiriac had a house and area where, for a while, Steffi Graf, Gabriela Sabatini or Jennifer Capriati).
He comes from a family of doctors
Morariu bought a house in Newport Beach, near Los Angeles, where she was very close to her best friend, Lindsay Davenport (with whom she won the Wimbledon doubles in 1999).
Corina has doctors in her family. The father, Albin, is a famous neurologist (he has his own clinic in Delray Beach, Florida). He emigrated to the USA in 1973. He was the only doctor in America willing to try to save Tim Gullikson from death in 1996, when Pete Sampras’ coach died of brain cancer.
Corina, on the WTA website
Retired from tennis, at the age of 45, Corina Morariu rebuilt her life in California. She married a billionaire and they have two children. Best friend Lindsay Davenport, with whom she was No. 1 doubles, is now captain of the USA at the BJK Cup. And Mircea, Corina’s brother, is a formidable pickleball player in Florida.
Corina’s resistance has become a symbol of America.
