Amanda Kloots shares an emotional video tribute to late husband Nick Cordero
Amanda Kloots shared loving memories of her husband Nick Cordero, who died Sunday at the age of 41 after a months-long battle with COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
Kloots, who shares a 1-year-old son Elvis with Cordero, posted a video on Instagram that documented her five-year romance with Cordero, the Tony-nominated star of Broadway shows including "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Rock of Ages."
"Nick always said we were completely different people that normally would never be together," Kloots wrote in a caption alongside the video. "We challenged each other and in doing so caused each other to grow and change. We pushed each other’s buttons in the best of ways."
"He would always look at me and say, 'I’m the luckiest.' Well darling, I was the luckiest to get to spend five years with you and to share a son that will always remind me of you," she wrote.
Kloots, a fitness trainer, shared Cordero's battle with COVID-19 with her followers on Instagram, documenting his many complications from the virus as well as the support her family received from around the world.
Every day at 3 p.m. PT, Kloots' 492,000 followers were encouraged to sign on to social media to sing Cordero's song "Live Your Life," with the hope that the actor would feel encouragement from afar.
That tradition "always made me feel better," Kloots said Monday, during a final 3 p.m. PT, tribute to Cordero on Instagram Live. She added that more importantly, it made Cordero into the famous rock star he always dreamed of becoming.
"We played this song a lot yesterday in Nick's room with him and we were singing to him and I kept telling him that he had the whole world singing his song and knowing who he was and what kind of an amazing person he was," she said. "I just wanted him to know that his dream of becoming a rock star happened. And sometimes your dreams happen and you don't get to fully embrace them, but Nick's dream of becoming a rock star definitely happened and it was because of you guys."
In the Instagram Live on Monday, Kloots said that although she wasn't sure "what Nick could see or understand," she always told him about the love being sent his way.
Cordero went to the emergency room in Los Angeles, where he and Kloots had recently moved, on March 30 for what he believed was pneumonia, but later tested positive for COVID-19. He was put on a ventilator within a matter of days.
Throughout his three-month stay in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Cordero suffered a number of setbacks, including severe lung infections and a clotting issue that resulted in a leg amputation. Kloots was not able to visit Cordero in the hospital until late June and said at the time he was "profoundly weak" and only able to communicate with his eyes and could just occasionally move his jaw.
