Single when diagnosed, her chances of having a child seemed low. But everything changed when she met her future husband during treatment: "It was meant to be."

When Lisa Tecklenburg was diagnosed with breast cancer at 35, her dream of having a baby seemed over.

She was single, didn't have "a whole bunch of success dating" at that point, she says, and doctors planned to medically induce menopause to stop estrogen from fueling her hormone-positive tumor.

"I really wanted a family, but I didn't have a pathway to a family to begin with," Tecklenburg, now 43 and an executive in Salt Lake City, Utah, tells TODAY.com. "And then you're faced with this potentially terminal illness."

But five weeks after starting chemotherapy, she met the man who would become her husband. They married 363 days later and welcomed their daughter, Louise, in 2023.

"I still look at her and I think, I can't believe you're mine. I can't believe you got here," Tecklenburg says. "I'm so grateful."

It was a seven-year journey to have a child, with Tecklenburg constantly wondering: How am I going to make this work?

In the fall of 2016, Tecklenburg was about to shower after a run when she noticed a small indent in her left breast. Such dents or dimples can be caused by a tumor pulling at the skin, doctors say.

The spot was hard when she touched it, but she was a "super healthy, super fit" vegetarian who didn't drink alcohol and had completed an Ironman race a few weeks earlier, so cancer didn't seem possible. Still, Tecklenburg had it checked out.

Her doctor urgently ordered a mammogram and a breast ultrasound, which revealed an almost 4-inch tumor that took up more than a third of her breast. It didn't show up on the mammogram because her breast tissue was so dense.

A biopsy confirmed Stage 3 breast cancer. Tecklenburg was just 35, even though most breast cancers are found in women over 50, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes. She tested negative for known breast cancer genes, but doctors still suspect a genetic component because she has a family history of the disease.

Tecklenburg didn't have a spouse or children, so she wasn't sure if she wanted to endure treatment.

"If it's my time, it's my time," she recalls thinking. "But my brother said to me, 'Lisa, I can't live this life without you.' It hit me in a very different way. I just looked at him and I said, 'I promise to fight with everything that I have.'"

The recommended treatment for Tecklenburg's hormone-positive breast cancer included drugs to induce menopause.

Before she started, she told her oncologist she really wanted to be mom and freeze her eggs. The doctor said it wasn't a good idea because the process required her to inject hormones into her body to stimulate her ovaries -- some of the same hormones that were fueling her cancer.

Tecklenburg allowed herself one cycle, telling herself, "I'm going to fight for everything that I ever wanted in this life, no matter what it takes." Doctors were able to retrieve and freeze 10 of her eggs in January 2017.

"My sister drove me from the fertility clinic up to the chemotherapy clinic to shut down my ovaries, and I started chemo three days later," she recalls.

Five weeks into chemotherapy, Tecklenburg was invited to a small gathering at a friend's house in Salt Lake City and started talking with a man sitting next to her. They ended up chatting all evening. His father was also going through breast cancer, and they had many other things in common.

"I joked with my friend at the end of the night and was like, 'Does your friend Eric need a girlfriend with breast cancer? I'm available,'" Tecklenburg recalls.

"I remember meeting Lisa for the first time at a friend's home, and despite clearly going through chemotherapy and lacking hair, when she walked in, her laughter and warmth immediately filled the room," Eric Edelman, her husband, tells TODAY.com.

Tecklenburg points out that Edelman is bald, so she likes to tease him that he fell in love with her because she was balder than him. She tried to convince him that dating her was not a good plan.

"I'm like, what is wrong with this guy? I mean, why would you date me? I'm like a disaster and a half," she recalls.

But Edelman knew he wanted to pursue a relationship.

"Her strength and positivity were truly something I wanted more of in my life," he says.

"It was just kind of meant to be," she adds.

They married in February 2018, almost a year to the day after they met. By that time, Tecklenburg had gone through chemotherapy, radiation, two mastectomies and breast reconstruction.

The couple created embryos using Tecklenburg's frozen eggs. They would have to use a surrogate for the pregnancy and finally found one in 2022. Their daughter, Louise, was born in January 2023.

"She's totally the joy of our life," Tecklenburg says.

The mom has no evidence of cancer and did an Ironman race a year after she finished her treatment. She and her husband love to hike in the mountains.

The journey to motherhood was incredibly challenging, but incredibly worth it, she notes.

"Life changes and it throws things at you," Tecklenburg says. "You find a way to get through it and you find a way to thrive in the life that you have."