Country music superstar Keith Urban played an intimate concert for a Ohio fan who couldn’t make it to his performance Thursday night. He visited Marissa English, who is in hospice care, after a social media push from her nurses to get him to meet her during his stint in the Buckeye state, CBS affiliate WTOL reports.
In front of a sold-out concert Thursday, Urban said he got to meet who he now believes is his “biggest” fan, “a beautiful girl named Marissa.”
Urban has fans all over the world, but her mother says you’d be hard-pressed to find someone as dedicated as Marissa.
“She has memorabilia from a couple of the other concerts we’ve been to,” Marissa’s mother, Marlise Matthews told WTOL. “She has a T-shirt that we put on a pillow that’s beside her all the time. It’s actually cute because she’ll pick up the pillow and hug it and kiss it (and) … she’ll point at it and say ‘Mr. Hottie.'”
Marissa is 25 years old — a miracle in and of itself. Doctors weren’t optimistic when she was born with a myriad of health conditions including an inoperable cyst on her brain, severe scoliosis and cerebral palsy, WTOL reports.
“She stayed in the hospital five and a half months and when we took her home, the doctors said, ‘Go home and enjoy her for possibly a year. That might be the longest you have her,'” Marlise said.
The ones who made the meeting happen, the nurses at Mercy Health St. Vincent Hospital, told WTOL Marissa’s health is rapidly declining. A social media campaign to bring Keith Urban to meet Marissa in person gained steam in recent weeks.
“We knew how important it was to Marissa to be at that concert tonight and since she wasn’t able to we were hoping to try and find some way to have Keith make a connection with her,” nurse Jan Cassity said.
Then on Thursday, video from inside the hospital room shows Urban kneeling beside her and singing to her. He took photos hugging her –– and giving her a moment she’ll never forget.
“She just has such a fascination with Keith and loves to watch him on TV and listen to his music,” said Marissa’s in-home nurse Jackie Codding. “I think it would mean the world to her.”
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