

But a freak accident in June of that year - she broke both femurs when she fell 10 feet from a ladder while hanging wisteria outside her three-bedroom lakeside home in Westchester County, New York - landed her in physical therapy for six months. In early 2001 she finally went back to the studio.

"It's something you never really get over," she says, "but you put it in a place inside you and deal with it in the way you have to."

Close friend Vicki DePasquale, 52, says, "A piece of her died with Larry."įor the next five years Branigan did the occasional concert to supplement her royalty income but mostly spent time alone or with close friends, slowly coming to terms with her grief. Branigan put him on herbal treatments they began spending more time at a beach cottage in the Hamptons, and Kruteck survived for another two and a half years. After surgery and chemotherapy, he was given two months to live - a prognosis Branigan refused to accept. Then, in 1994, doctors found a grapefruit-size tumor in Kruteck's colon. They married nine months later and, when she wasn't touring, hunkered down at their New York City apartment.

As a 24-year-old in 1981, when she met Kruteck at a Manhattan party, Branigan was on the way up.īut Kruteck, a lawyer 20 years her senior, was "not at all threatened" by her career, she says. While the new single may not stir the same kind of fervor "Gloria" did, Branigan sees her comeback attempt as an emergence from years of mourning. But now Branigan is dipping her toe back into the pop scene with a dance remake of ABBA's "The Winner Takes It All," a single that Billboard Magazine editor Chuck Taylor calls a "satisfying high-energy thumper." "It was not even a choice." Paralyzing grief kept her away from a music career for years. Want more from PEOPLE.COM? Sign up for free e-mails
