in chicago, just after the magazine was awarded a $150 million bequest by pharmaceutical heiress ruth lillyin love and married. >> falling in love with my wife, meeting my wife really shook my world up in ways i couldn't have predicted. i had not been able to write for a long time and i began to write after that. she and i began to say prayers after we got together and we also began to talk about going to church. we didn't actually make it in the door, but we talked about it. >> reporter: then, at the age of 39, just one year into his marriage, wiman was diagnosed with a rare and incurable blood cancer. >> i have cursed mightily and i have been furious and have cursed god just like any old testament prophet. it didn't ever destroy me, it didn't ever make me bitter toward the people that i love. but gosh, it's been hard. i would say the illness made me need to formalize faith, need to find some form for it. it wasn't necessarily that i felt like i needed to be surrounded by people who were going to help us. i think that's part of it. it was more simply a sense of solidarity and suffering and