Tom Scalera and Brett Ravage, who both lost their spouses to cancer in 2019, met through the MSK community and were married the day after Thanksgiving, in 2024.
It was a magical late autumn evening last year, in the heart of a charming Connecticut town. Family and friends had gathered to celebrate the marriage of Brett Ravage and Tom Scalera, a beautiful couple getting a second chance at love.
But what makes Brett and Tom’s wedding extraordinary, and their reception unforgettable, is what the bride and groom did that day for love.
The pair turned their wedding reception into a major fundraiser in support of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and its mission: ending cancer for life. This idea was not just admirable. For the bride and groom, it was deeply personal.
“It all came together for us,” Tom explains. “This MSK fundraiser was a good way to convert our journey into something even more meaningful.”
In lieu of gifts, they told guests, they would gratefully accept any donation large or small to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Legacy of Love fundraiser, established in memory of Aaron and Rebecca, the beloved spouses they had lost to rare cancers five years earlier.
“We put our blood, sweat, and tears into fundraising for MSK,” Tom said. “And with our special wedding fundraiser, we also put our heart and soul into it.”
Brett and Tom’s blended family at a Cycle for Survival event fundraiser for MSK research into rare cancers
A Match Made in Heaven
Brett and Tom’s journey together began in 2019, as two grieving spouses who had just lost the loves of their lives to rare cancers — Aaron to Ewing sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, and Rebecca to metastatic breast cancer. Although Tom and Brett lived in the same town, just one mile apart, they didn’t know each other.
“We had only met briefly before our tragedies struck,” Tom says. But their lives, in fact, had been intersecting at so many points that falling in love seemed almost like fate. “We say it’s kind of a match made in heaven,” says Tom.
The connector was Tom’s spouse, Rebecca, a psychologist, who had received a diagnosis of late-stage breast cancer in 2015. It was a total shock. Although determined to beat the odds, she knew her treatment options were limited. Rebecca also quickly learned that she could make a difference. Only a small percentage of breast cancer research dollars are funneled into metastatic breast cancer (the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance estimates it’s around 7%). Rebecca set out to change that.
In 2016, she launched the The Cancer Couch Foundation | MSK Giving with a clear goal, to fund metastatic breast cancer research. She partnered with MSK to help accelerate treatment and someday find a cure.
In 2018, just across town, Brett’s healthy and fit husband, Aaron, began to experience hip pain. He was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma at another medical center. Because Aaron’s disease is so rare in adults, he came to MSK Kids to be treated by Leonard H. Wexler, MD, and the pediatric oncology experts. That year Brett and her family joined a Cycle for Survival team called Pedaling Sunshine and raised $50,000 for research into rare cancers at MSK.
When Aaron’s cancer had metastasized and Brett was looking for guidance about navigating advanced disease, a mutual friend introduced her to Rebecca.
“Although Rebecca was in treatment, she was always looking to help everybody, and she certainly helped me,” says a grateful Brett. “She was a very big support for me, and she guided me in a lot of great directions. We became fast friends.”
Brett and Tom’s full-circle MSK journey from loss to love to giving back
By 2019, Aaron’s disease had progressed rapidly, and Rebecca knew that she, too, had limited time. They died within six months of each other, plunging their heartbroken spouses into the isolation of COVID, two single parents with five children between them, lost in grief, trying to survive the pandemic.
Brett, a mother of three, had made a promise to Rebecca to watch over her two children. She and Tom began to text.
“I would periodically check in on Tom and the kids,” she says, “Just to say, I’ve been there.”
Over many months, a friendship slowly grew. Then sparks. They say that love broke through the darkness. They knew from their happy marriages what a beautiful love felt like. “And we knew we had it again!” Tom says.
I Do/We Do
Tom is now president of the Cancer Couch Foundation, which has raised more than $6 million. Brett is a passionate fundraiser for her Pedaling Sunshine team, which has raised over $3 million.
Tom and Brett pledged their “I dos” — not just in the creation of their new life together, but to stay steadfast in their mission to raise money for MSK in memory of Rebecca and Aaron.
“This is the greatest foursome of all time,” Tom says, making a golf analogy. “We think about Aaron and Rebecca and keeping them a part of everything we do.”
In losing their beloved spouses, they found their way to each other. Making space for more love, says Brett, has been their best wedding gift. “Your heart can always grow bigger.”