Luke Bryan Meets Biggest Fan at Concert—a 7-Year-Old Battling Cancer
A little girl named Mary Stegmueller had a dream come true on Saturday, July 29, when she met country singer Luke Bryan.
Mary, who has been fighting cancer her whole life, was gifted a private suite at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado, for Bryan's concert, and the singer came to meet her after.
Speaking with CBS News Colorado, Mary's family was incredibly grateful for the donated suite, which came to be thanks to someone connecting the Archdiocese of Denver with former Nuggets player and announcer Bill Hanzlik. He was able to secure the family the suite so that Mary could safely attend the show.
Kristin Stegmueller, Mary's mother, said, "If we hadn't had a donation of the suite, she would not have been able to go to the concert because she would've been in general (admission seating) and she's immunosuppressed."
Stegmueller shared that her 7-year-old daughter stayed awake throughout the whole concert and "just kept getting up to dance." She got to meet her idol in person, and Bryan even sang to Mary, a moment depicted in a photo on the CBS News site.
Her mother described the interaction: "When she met him he started to sing one of his songs to her and she tried to pop up to dance and she was legitimately swooning in his arms."
Stegmueller shared plenty of photos from the eventful night out on her Facebook.
Mary was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, also known as DIPG, when she was 4 years old, with her mother sharing that the doctors predicted they only had "six to nine months" with radiation. Three years later, and Mary is still fighting the disease.
"She has fought everything, she's had over 42 sessions of radiation, 12 of those she did awake. She's had over 70 MRIs," said Stegmueller about her 7-year-old daughter, who began radiation again on July 31.
She added, "You never know how much time you have and we just want to be able to look back and remember all this time we've had."
Mary's night with Bryan is definitely a memory she'll hang on to forever.
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