Who is Chuck Norris' wife? Screen legend gave up his acting career to care for the love of his life
NAVASOTA, TEXAS: Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris has been away from the limelight for several years now. Recently, he was seen posing sweetly with his granddaughter for a social media post. Greta Norris – the granddaughter of the martial art expert – posted the adorable image on her Instagram page.
The photograph attracted hundreds of likes and positive comments, including, “Mr. Chuck Norris you have a beautiful granddaughter” and “good ol’ chuck.” Norris is a proud family man now with five children – Mike, Dakota Alan, Danilee Kelly, Dina, Eric, and six grandchildren — Greta, Camrynn, Max, Chantz, Hannah and Chloe, as per The Mirror.
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Who is Chuck Norris' wife?
Norris has tied the knot not once but twice. The actor and Dianne Kay Holechek were reportedly childhood sweethearts before marrying each other in 1958. They remained married for three decades before getting a divorce in 1989. Years later, he found love again in model Gena O'Kelley and the pair became husband and wife in 1998.
For ‘The Expendables 2’ star O'Kelley is not just his wife, she is his “best friend and business partner." "We are blessed to live, love and work together,” he had once reportedly said. However, things went south for Norris and O'Kelley when in the early 2010s, she had to go under multiple magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to keep a check on her rheumatoid arthritis. For the scans, she reportedly got injections of contrast dye, which included the heavy metal gadolinium, which worsened her condition.
O'Kelley had spoken about it with Good Health. She said, as per The Mirror, “Within hours after the first jab I felt like my whole body was on fire — as if acid had been passed through it. The burning was isolated at first, but it just kept spreading.” It has been said that initially, doctors failed to understand her issue but a clinic in Nevada recognized it as gadolinium poisoning.
The businesswoman reportedly stated, “By the time I reached the clinic — weeks after I had the injections — I had lost 15lb and was finding it hard to swallow — I had to be fed baby food. I just lay in bed on an IV for five months and had to have round-the-clock nursing care.”
This was the time when Norris decided to leave his flourishing career and gave all his time to his wife. She reportedly said, “Chuck slept beside me on the couch and never left. I prayed that I would live to raise my children.” At the time, the now-82-year-old had shared, “I've given up my film career to concentrate on Gena, my whole life right now is about keeping her alive. I believe this issue is so important.”
In a 2017 article for World Net Daily, Norris had written, “Those multiple MRIs yielded little about her arthritis, but they did give her gadolinium poisoning that nearly took her life, and then chronically led to gadolinium deposition disease. The following years have been riddled with debilitating bouts of pain and anguish, as we have literally traveled the globe in pursuit of alternative medicine that may help her recover. She has suffered long-term health implications requiring multiple hospitalizations."
He continued, “Gena has experienced cognitive impairment, body pain/burning, kidney damage, loss of energy/mobility, muscle cramping and weakness and difficulty breathing, to name a few health issues. Now, almost five years post-gadolinium poisoning, she continues to require regular stem cell therapies and other treatments to heal her central nervous system.”
“We've spent almost $2 million in out-of-pocket medical expenses to save her and provide some quality of life. But we had to go outside of mainstream medicine to accomplish this. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has still not approved the most common gadolinium removal treatment, chelation, which patients must seek out and pay for themselves,” Norris added.