Congratulations are in order for Maria Menounos and her husband Keven Undergaro! After a decade of trying to start a family, the couple are happy to announce the arrival of their first child via surrogacy! Mario and Kevin confirmed to Us Weekly on July 19 that their daughter, Athena Alexandra, was born on June 23. “It was the most special moment of my life,” Maria gushed, of holding her newborn for the first time.
In the Us Weekly interview, the couple also shared the first photos of Athena. Maria said that being a mom feels “euphoric,” and said that she and Keven consider Athena to be their “miracle baby.” She added, “It felt amazing, but also really natural, like we had been together a long time.”
The arrival of the new bundle of joy comes after Maria recently revealed her harrowing battle with cancer. In January 2023, six years after having a benign brain tumor removed, the TV personality was diagnosed with Stage 2 pancreatic cancer. She secretly underwent surgery a month later to have a 3.9 cm tumor removed, along with her spleen, a large fibroid and 17 lymph nodes. “I had that moment where I thought I was a goner,” Maria recalled in an interview with PEOPLE. “But I’m okay because I caught this early enough.”
The road to parenthood for Maria and Keven, who married in 2017, was already a difficult one even before the cancer diagnosis. “Just after a decade of trying everything, we are so grateful to the beautiful family helping us conceive our baby,” Maria told the outlet in February 2022. “Keven, my dad and I are all beyond excited for this soul to come into our lives. What a blessing.” It was only a year before when they had nearly given up hope, after first starting IVF treatments in 2012. “I definitely didn’t think it was going to take this long. It’s been years. We’ve used different services, different people,” she told the outlet in February 2022. “It’s just been a very frustrating process.”
It all worked out, of course, but not before Maria and Kevin got a bit of help from her A-list friends! “Zoe Saldana and Kim Kardashian have been so helpful to me in this journey, and they both gave me all their advice and people,” Maria said on the Feb. 7 episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan. “And Kim especially gave me this wonderful lawyer named Andy, and he found me this woman, Stephanie, who helped me find my surrogate. We’re just so grateful because these people really help you bring life forward. And without them, we wouldn’t be able to do this.
“Our surrogate and her family are literal angels,” Maria added at the time. “I’m so grateful to have this extended family that our baby will be part of and we’re just so grateful to everybody who’s helped us along the way.”