Milena McConchie, wife of ex-state senator Dan McConchie, dies at 51 from cancer tied to Chernobyl disaster

Milena McConchie, the wife of recently resigned state senator Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods, died Friday from complications of the cancer she endured since exposure to the radiation of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

Dan McConchie posted news of his loss and the life he had shared with her on Facebook Saturday.

“Unfortunately, the health troubles that plagued her since Chernobyl were not to be outrun,” he wrote. “She passed away from heart failure due to the cancer, the radiation, and the chemotherapy treatments that we now know cause the heart muscle to harden. Fortunately, she is now free of those troubles and is finally in a place where there is no sickness and there is no death with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

While Milena grew up in Bulgaria under Communism, her dreams of living free from that repressive system came true in 1990 when she was only 16, Dan said.

But four years earlier, she had been forced to march in support of the government during May Day celebrations while the Chernobyl disaster of a week earlier wasn’t being acknowledged. The rains that day carried the radiation and proved particularly harmful to maturing children, he said.

The couple met during a summer program on free market economics in Prague offered by The Fund for American Studies. Dan proposed to her six months later at the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, just before Milena’s cancer diagnosis. They married in the midst of her treatments.

“It was the start of a great life,” Dan wrote. “We both became accomplished professionals. We had two wonderful daughters. And she let me chase my dreams including what would become the honor of a lifetime, becoming an Illinois State Senator.”

As his supporters, Milena and their daughters felt the burden of his service more than he did himself through all the obligations of the job, Dan felt.

Even during the good years, there were always reminders of the cancer battle Milena was fighting, though she rarely revealed the extent to which she was suffering, he said.

“She was an extremely strong individual,” Dan said. “She fought very hard — not only for her health, but for the betterment of society. I’m better off for having known her.”

He resigned from the Illinois Senate on Feb. 2 to become CEO of the Accessibility Policy Institute, which will address the needs of people with disabilities at the local, state and federal levels. Dan has himself used a wheelchair since a 2007 motorcycle crash.

But the state of Milena’s health was more of a contributing factor to his change of jobs than he’d said at the time.

“I had hoped we would have a few more years,” he said. “It didn’t work out that way, but we at least had a few more weeks.”

An Illinois National Guard veteran, Dan served in Springfield since being appointed to fill a vacancy in the senate’s 26th District in 2016.

Services for Milena are being scheduled for Sunday, March 2, and will be arranged by Davenport Family Funeral Home, 941 S. Old Rand Road in Lake Zurich.

Dan and Milena just started a scholarship fund seeking donations to support students from Bulgaria, Ukraine and Eastern Europe to attend The Fund for American Studies program in Prague which changed both of their lives in personal and professional ways.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20250222/obituaries/milena-mcconchie-wife-of-recently-resigned-state-senator-dan-mcconchie-dies-at-51/