What Happened to Dana Reeve? Exploring Her Own Tragic Story

As if what happened to Superman actor Christopher Reeve wasn’t already tragic enough, his wife, Dana Reeve, also suffered her own health issues at the end of her life.

After Christopher was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 1995, Dana cared for him for years until his death in 2004. But within months of Christopher’s passing, Dana was dealt two horrifying blows.

What happened to Dana Reeve?

Dana Morosini was born in New Jersey in March 1961 to father Charles Morosini, a cardiologist, and mother Helen Simpson Morosini. She was raised in Greenburgh, N.Y., and later attended college at Middlebury in Vermont, where she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English literature in 1984. She then studied acting at California Institute of the Arts for its graduate MFA program.

In 1987, Dana met actor Christopher Reeve at a theater festival, when he walked into a cabaret and couldn’t help but notice the woman who was singing — Dana, of course. He was already a big star at the time, and though Dana was initially wary, he eventually won her over, as author Christopher Anderson explained to CBS in 2008. After dating for four years, Dana wanted to get married, but Christopher — whose parents had divorced — was afraid of the commitment. But he worked through his reservations via therapy, and soon after the couple got pregnant with their son, William, they got married in April 1992. William was born that June.

In 1995, Christopher was involved in a devastating accident in which he fell from his horse during a jumping competition. He became paralyzed from the neck down. Reportedly, when he learned of his condition upon waking up in the hospital, he wanted doctors to pull the plug, feeling that he would be a burden to his family. But Dana told him that she still loved him and would always be with him and take care of him. As a compromise, she even told him that if he still felt the same way in two years, they could reassess.

But Christopher lived on — for 10 years, in fact, before he passed away from heart failure on Oct. 10, 2004. During those years together, they advocated heavily for people with spinal cord injuries and launched the Christopher Reeve Foundation (which later became the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation). “Today, through the Reeve Foundation’s persistence and promise, neuroscientists worldwide agree that repairing the damaged spinal cord is not a question of if but when,” the foundation says.

Within months of Christopher’s death in 2004, Dana endured two more heartbreaking events: She lost her mother, and she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Though Dana said she never smoked, folks speculated that her time singing in smoky bars may have contributed to why she got sick. Ultimately, Dana died from the lung cancer on March 6, 2006.

“She wasn’t just resilient,” author Anderson told CBS about Dana’s perseverance and positivity throughout her life’s hardships. “She was joyful about life. I think that really came through. She made jokes about being called a saint all the time. She didn’t like it. She said ‘I’m just a woman whose husband fell off a horse and I’m taking care of him and that’s what you do.'”

Source: CBS, Christopher Reeve Foundation