When bonafide Broadway legend Audra McDonald came to the Playbill Studio recently to look back on her life in the theatre, she reflected that a stack of her Playbills reminds her less of her time onstage than what was happening in her life behind the scenes.

“When you do theatre for a living, you kind of see your whole life, the big moments, based on what show you were in,” she said wistfully. The beginning of her career and her Broadway debut: The Secret Garden. Meeting a life-long best friend, and the first of what would become six career (so far!) Tony Awards: Carousel. A legendary co-star becomes a lifelong mentor, and the namesake of one of her children: Master Class.

And then there’s 110 in the Shade, a 2007 revival of the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical where McDonald played Lizzie, an unmarried woman in the Old West who must choose between the attentions of the local sheriff and a charismatic con man who promises to bring rain. Though the plot isn’t what stood out to McDonald.

“That was the show I was doing when my father was killed in a plane crash,” she said, explaining why she had been stumbling trying to talk about the show. “Five days before we opened, we had to stop for a second so I could go home for the funeral.” McDonald’s character has a really close bond with her father in the show, which she says made performing it after the sudden loss of her dad tricky. But ultimately, she says, it was a gift.

“I was able to work through all my love for my father onstage every night, with [actor] John Cullum,” she remembers. “Theatre heals.”

Even though that musical lasted for just 94 performances, it made a massive impact on McDonald’s life. It’s where she met her husband, Will Swenson, who was in the ensemble and understudied McDonald’s love interest. “He had kids, and I had kids, and our kids started playing together and became friends,” she remembers. “And then after the show closed, life lifed and we started dating.” Eighteen years later, the Broadway power duo is still going strong, and have added a child, Sally, to their roster of family co-stars. “So 110 in the Shade, a show that I thought was going to make my family smaller because of losing my dad, ended up growing my family.”

To see McDonald reflect on the rest of her historic, incredible Broadway career—including her most recent, Tony-nominated turn as Rose in Gypsy—watch her full episode of Playbill's My Life in the Theatre above.