This is the TJ and Jess show. Thank you for turning this on. I want to dedicate this episode today

to a beautiful 29-year-old woman who unfortunately is no longer with us. Did that make you feel

weird when I said beautiful 29-year-old woman? No, because I know who you're talking about. There are

beautiful 29-year-old women.

No, it doesn't make me feel weird.

There's a very long story about how we met her,

and we told that story on this podcast over two years ago.

I'm going to replay that in a little while,

but first we have some updating to do.

Mariana was one of two people who dramatically shifted my perspective on life.

The first person was my friend who I had when I was a kid.

His name was Stephen, and at 16 years old, he passed away from cancer.

I had never experienced being near death, especially someone so young at that age.

That moment sort of woke me up where I'm like, whoa, we don't actually know how long we're

going to be here.

And some people get dealt different hands than others.

But when we face that, it changes the way we live our lives. And as I've gotten older,

I've thought about that and put it through many different filters, but it started with Stephen,

thinking beyond the right now. And then five years ago, you'll hear the full story in a moment, we meet Marianna Triollo.

And this girl was 24 when we met her, and she had just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Stage four.

We were in touch with Marianna for about five years, and we got to know her more and more

...