"It proved to be the right decision," he said. And a few months later, he would play on the U.S. Johnson went on to attack the HIV stigma with the same passion he displayed on the court, launching the Magic Johnson Foundation to raise awareness about the virus, then pushing Congress and the White House to spend money to fight the disease.īut he still longed for the game of basketball, and his first retirement would not last long.Įven though Johnson had not played a single regular season game, fans voted him onto the NBA All-Star team in 1992.
"And I didn't want people to treat us like we were lepers."Ĭookie eventually went to the news conference wearing a white suit that she said symbolized "brightness" and "a future." So they thought you couldn't touch people, you couldn't hug people," she said. 7, 1991 news conference announcing his diagnosis - and short-lived retirement - because of the stigma surrounding AIDS. "I wanted to make sure that she was gonna be OK, the baby was gonna be OK, and then I could move forward with trying to make sure I was gonna be OK."Ĭookie stood by her husband's side all along, but she initially did not want him to hold the now-famous Nov. "Yes, because I was scared to death," he said. Johnson said it was a huge relief when his wife's and baby's test results came back negative. The couple, who met as students at Michigan State University in the 1970s, had married about a month before his diagnosis and they had just learned about her pregnancy. It was, 'You're possibly going to die.' And that trumped everything," she told CBS News. "It wasn't how he got it that was important to me. When Johnson broke the news to her, Cookie knew it was "probably through sexual contact," since he hadn't had any blood transfusions, but she was worried about something else. "It was hard because I loved her so much and I hated to hurt her," he said.
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