Plainview-raised Jill Martin 'grateful' breast cancer diagnosis came after her wedding

"Today" lifestyle correspondent Jill Martin, who recently underwent breast-cancer surgery, says she is glad she received the diagnosis after her September wedding to investment banker Erik Brooks.

Saying she now views her life as being divided into “before and after the diagnosis," Martin, 47, a Southampton resident born and raised in Plainview, told People magazine in a story posted Sunday that she is "grateful” that not learning the news until this month allowed her wedding at the main branch of the New York Public Library to be “such a purely happy event.”

After undergoing a double mastectomy last week under Dr. Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, with reconstructive surgery to come later under specialist Dr. Mark Sultan, Martin said living in the "after" feels “like this is a new chapter with a new journey. … [But] that's not bad because I am going to take this. It will just be different.”

Going forward, she said, “[M]y choices will be affected by it, and my lifestyle will be affected by it, and my outlook will be affected by it. And there will be a lot of beautiful, positive silver linings that come out of it, and of course, heartbreak. … I mean, this is heartbreaking."

Martin revealed on NBC's “Today” on July 17 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer — after having already been set for preventive surgery due to family history of the disease and having tested positive for the predictive BRCA gene.

“When I went in for my scans to get the preventative surgery — and this is all in [a] matter of three weeks — they found cancer,” Martin said on the morning show. “And so that test saved my life. Had I not gotten the test, I wouldn't have gotten the scans, and we would be telling a very different story. So I feel super-grateful to be here, to be able to say, like, talk to your doctors and go get tested.”