Cookie Johnson stands with Magic against AIDS
Wife of the most famous person ever infected with HIV joins global fight
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Magic Johnson’s personal campaign Nov. 29: The former NBA player and his wife, Cookie Johnson, talk to TODAY anchor Matt Lauer about their ongoing role in educating others about the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Today show |
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After 16 years of staying in the background and letting her famous husband do the talking, Cookie Johnson is joining Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s battle to combat HIV and AIDS.
“My goal is to go out across the country and speak to over 1,000 women; to educate them and to empower them,” Cookie Johnson told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Thursday in New York.
With her husband beside her looking as fit and healthy as he says he feels, she talked at length for the first time about how she and her husband have together taken on the virus that infected him in 1991.
Johnson was the biggest star in the NBA when his announcement stunned the nation. He and the former Earlitha “Cookie” Kelly had gotten married in September of 1991, just two months before he announced that he was infected with the HIV virus.
She was pregnant with their son, Earvin III, at the time. Neither she nor her son was infected with HIV.
HIV/AIDS was still a little-understood and highly feared disease at the time, and Johnson was forced to retire from the NBA at the age of 32 because of the fears of other players who did not want to take the court with him. He began taking newly discovered drugs to keep the virus at bay and continues to take anti-viral drugs today.
He also formed the Magic Johnson Foundation to improve the quality of life for people living in urban centers and has become a leading spokesman in the worldwide battle against HIV/AIDS.
On Saturday, Dec. 1, he and his wife will participate in World AIDS Day, he in New York and she in Los Angeles. Their own campaign is called “I Stand with Magic.”
“It was rough, especially in 1991,” Cookie Johnson said of learning of Magic’s infection. “There wasn’t a lot known about HIV, and AIDS, so we didn’t know if the baby was going to be OK. We took a positive attitude, and if you have a positive attitude, you can beat this.”
Standing by Magic a ‘no-brainer’
Johnson admitted that he had been promiscuous and had not practiced safe sex. Lauer asked Cookie Johnson why she didn’t leave her husband after he dropped the devastating news.
“To me it was a no-brainer,” she said. “I love him and I’m going to support him.”
Magic Johnson has served as living proof that having HIV is no longer an automatic death sentence. There still is no cure for the disease or vaccine to prevent it, but anti-viral drugs can keep it from progressing to full-blown AIDS and allow those infected to live long and productive lives.
According to world health authorities, an estimated 33.2 million people around the world are infected with HIV, with 2.5 million newly infected, a figure that represents a decline from last year. An estimated 2.1 million died of the disease last year.
Nearly 70 percent of all those infected reside in sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States, it is estimated that one million Americans are infected, with as many as one quarter of those unaware that they are infected.
Magic and Cookie Johnson are particularly concerned that the virus attacks the African-American community at a far higher rate than it does the general population. Although African-Americans make up just 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections.
Cookie Johnson said she has joined the campaign specifically to talk to women, especially African-American women, whose HIV infection rate is 20 times higher than it is for Caucasian women.
She told Lauer that one problem may be that people look at her husband’s continued good health as a sign that HIV/AIDS is not as fearsome as it once was thought to be.
“People have gotten complacent and they’re not alarmed anymore,” she told Lauer. “They don’t think it’s a death sentence. They still think, ‘It can’t happen to me.’ The reason I got on board is because of the women. I wanted to be a face for the women, to get out there and talk to them and educate them. I don’t think they think it can happen to them.”
She said her message to women is to put themselves first and to get tested and then to make sure their partners get tested. “Also, I want to empower women to take an active role in the relationship to make sure that they are practicing safe sex,” she added.
She and Magic both emphasized the importance of thinking positively and actively fighting the disease. In addition to his charity work, Magic Johnson has built a business empire by developing theaters, restaurants and Starbucks stores in urban neighborhoods.
“To be a spouse of someone who has HIV and AIDS, you still work toward having a normal life,” Cookie Johnson said. “That’s what we do. We eat healthy, we work out, we never look back. We only look forward.”
More on the fight against HIV/AIDS |
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