Laura Orrico and Ryan Cosgrove met in 1999 and knew they were destined for love. Professionally, Orrico worked in Hollywood on shows like CSI: Miami and Kevin Can Wait. Personally, she and Cosgrove desperately wanted a baby but had trouble getting pregnant. Then life threw them an unexpected and devastating blow. Doctors diagnosed Cosgrove with brain cancer, and his wife took a pause in her career to care for him. Sadly, he died, but not before leaving his wife an incredible gift.
Orrico told People that watching her husband suffer broke her heart. “We did everything we could in those eight years to balance life, try to do fun things with days that were rough,” she said. “We’d go see a movie on a day after treatments or have some things to look forward to, which I think is what got us through those eight years. But he had the most positive attitude.”
Before Cosgrove began his cancer treatment in 2007, he froze his sperm so they could have children later in life. The couple tried four intrauterine inseminations and finally got pregnant, but Orrico miscarried. They tried two rounds of in vitro fertilization that resulted in pregnancies but ended in miscarriage. All the while, Cosgrove continued to get sicker.
“It was quite a difficult time seeing him decline and suffer. Especially with a brain tumor, you start to slowly lose function. So that was hard,” she admitted to the magazine.
Sadly, Cosgrove succumbed to cancer in 2015. Orrico became a widow at 38 without any children. She told People she dated after her husband’s death and even became pregnant again but suffered another miscarriage.
Orrico dreamed of marriage and children, but she realized that wasn’t happening for her. In late 2024, she made a big decision to try once again to get pregnant and raise a baby on her own. She said her husband gave her his blessing to use his sperm after his death.
“He’s just such a sweetheart in that he thought that,” she shared. “I have his blessing, and papers get signed when you do that. You sign it off in death if your partner is okay to go forward. So I did have his blessing.”
On May 28, 2025, she completed an IVF cycle, and on June 9, at age 48, learned she’s pregnant with her husband’s baby. She shared the news with her mom and Cosgrove’s mom, who are thrilled for her.
“I think I want to cherish every moment. I think I want to do things with family and trips and just spend that quality time, because if this is my only one, and it very well could be, you don’t get that back,” Orrico told People.
She’s documenting her journey in the YouTube series Life & Love After Loss with Laura Orrico. “Sharing is therapeutic & my way of helping people who might be going through something similar. This is my story,” she notes in her bio.
Orrico hopes to one day meet “her person.” But if that doesn’t happen, she’ll revel in the beautiful life she’s living right now.
