Harry Connick and wife Jill on Her Secret 5-Year Battle with breast cancer

Five years ago, Harry Connick Jr.‘s world changed forever.

In October 2012, the multiplatinum recording artist, host of the daytime talk show Harryand actor’s wife, Jill Goodacre, had a routine annual mammogram that came back clear.

“They said, ‘Okay, looks good. Since you have dense breasts, just go across the hall for your sonogram,’ ” Goodacre, 53, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. But during the sonogram, something was detected. After undergoing a biopsy, Goodacre received the harrowing news — during breast cancer awareness month — that she had Stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma and would need to immediately undergo a lumpectomy, followed by radiation.

“I was scared I was going to lose her, absolutely,” says Connick Jr., 50, whose mother died of ovarian cancer when he was 13. “I wasn’t going to let her see that, but I was. I know from losing my mom that the worst can happen. She’s my best friend, and I really don’t know what I would do without her.”

On Thursday’s episode of Harry, the couple will candidly discuss her cancer journey and the day she was diagnosed — “It’s one of the hardest days of my life,” she recalls — in a heart-to-heart discussion. 

Here's more of their chat here

They tell People that she had a mammogram that came back normal in October of 2012, but were told to take a sonogram because she has “dense breasts,” where something was detected. Soon, they discovered that she had Stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma and would need surgery, followed by radiation.

  • “I was scared I was going to lose her, absolutely,” says Connick Jr., 50, whose mother died of ovarian cancer when he was 13. “I wasn’t going to let her see that, but I was. I know from losing my mom that the worst can happen. She’s my best friend, and I really don’t know what I would do without her.”
  • Goodacre, 53, says telling their three daughters was the worst part.
  • Since the diagnosis, she’s had two surgeries, plus radiation and has taken medications, one which, Tamoxifen, has caused side effects like weight gain, which the former Victoria’s Secret model has struggled with.
  • “I’ve always been a pretty fit person, and so to be just rounder and heavier and not to really be able to do much about it – that’s been hard. It’s taken a lot out of my self-confidence,” she tells People.
  • Approaching the five-year mark of remission, she says she is looking forward to stopping the Tamoxifen and telling people outside of her family about her diagnosis.

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