Tony Bennett’s wife, Susan Benedetto, is opening up more about the singer’s health condition.
Bennett’s family firstrevealed that he lives with Alzheimer’s diseaseback in February, and the 95-year-old music legend took the stageone last timein August, with back-to-back shows at New York’s Radio City Music Hall alongside frequent collaboratorLady Gaga.
During Sunday’s episode of60 Minutes,Anderson Coopersat down with Bennett and Benedetto following his final stage appearance.
“He recognizes me, thank goodness, his children, you know we are blessed in a lot of ways,” Benedetto told the journalist. “He’s very sweet.”
“He doesn’t know he has it,” she added, referring to his Alzheimer’s.
Previously,Benedetto saidthat Bennett was unable to understand what the disease is.
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During the60 Minutesbroadcast, Bennett performed a song with his pianist — recalling each word and note without sheet music or lyrics in front of him.
“Well that was really one of the great honors I’ve ever had,” Cooper, 54, said, thanking Bennett for the song.
“Tony likes to say he’s in the business of making people feel good, and he still is,” Benedetto commented, to which Bennett confirmed, “That’s it.”
Dr. Gaytari Devi, who diagnosed Bennett with the disease in 2017, said in the60 Minutesinterview that the star “knows he’s Tony Bennett and he knows how to behave like Tony Bennett.”
“That’s an area of the brain that’s just so an innately hardwired part of his brain,” she told Cooper. “And it’s also an area of his brain that gives them real meaning and purpose in his life, and it’s imbued with emotion.”
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“It’s not a sad story,” she said. “It’s emotional. It’s hard to watch somebody change. I think what’s been beautiful about this, and what’s been challenging, is to see how it affects him in some ways, but to see how it doesn’t affect his talent.”
“I think he really pushed through something to give the world the gift of knowing that things can change and you can still be magnificent,” she concluded.
source: people.com
