Ted Koppel and Wife Grace Anne Open 11th Clinic Providing Access to Treatment That Saved Her Life (Exclusive)

Grace Anne Dorney Koppel was told she only had a few years left after her 2001 COPD diagnosis. Now, the couple provides the treatment that keeps her 'very much alive 23 years later'

• Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, have opened their eleventh pulmonary rehabilitation clinic to help people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

• Grace Anne was diagnosed with COPD in 2001 and told she only had a few years left to live

• Their clinics focus on underserved areas where rates of COPD skyrocket — and as Grace Anne says, more needs to be done as COPD is a leading cause of death in the U.S.

Iconic newsman Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, have opened their eleventh pulmonary rehab clinic — part of their ongoing mission via the Dorney-Koppel Foundation to help underserved communities where Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) cases are high.

And for the Koppels, the fight against COPD is personal; in 2001, Grace Anne was diagnosed with the progressive lung disorder.

But before she was given the bleak diagnosis, Ted tells PEOPLE her doctor told her "lose ten pounds, and you'll feel like a new woman. Well, it was a little more complicated than that.”

It’s indicative of how misunderstood COPD is — even though it’s one of the leading causes of death in the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says 16 million people have the chronic lung disorder — and “many more do not know they have it.”

When Grace Anne was finally given the COPD diagnosis, she says she was told, “You’ve got to begin making end-of-life preparations. You've got 3 to 5 years left to live.”

“I got that awful diagnosis, but at the same time I got a great gift,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was given a prescription for pulmonary rehab.”

As she explains, pulmonary rehab is an individualized program.

“Its main building block is exercise," she says, "but it also includes nutrition, how to take your medicines properly, how to recognize a lung attack and how to respond.”

And as Ted points out, "Something even as simple-seeming as an inhaler needs to be demonstrated. One of our pulmonologists told us about a patient who had an inhaler and claimed it wasn't doing anything — [because] she sprayed it in her armpit.”

Their very first clinic was actually a birthday gift to Grace Anne from Ted, who quips, “It was a birthday with a zero — and the zero was not the first number.”

And now, access to pulmonary rehab care is “an extraordinary gift to people who really are given very little hope,” he tells PEOPLE. Since the opening of that first clinic in rural Maryland, they’ve opened 10 others, including the first-ever pulmonary rehab in Washington, D.C.

As Grace Anne explains, “there's been almost no advance in drug development for COPD. We work for a cure, but it's surely not in sight.”

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As Ted tells PEOPLE, Grace Anne “used to refer to COPD as the Rodney Dangerfield of diseases. It don't get no respect — for many reasons, smoking among them. And one of the things that people don't understand is that smoking is far from being the only cause of COPD.”

Eight of their clinics are in West Virginia, where the nearly 12% of the population has been diagnosed with the disease, according to CDC estimates. As Grace Anne says, “the smoking rates have gone down in this country, and yet rural women are still being diagnosed with COPD where a lot of the environmental hazards exist.”

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Pulmonary rehab, Ted explains, “gives people their independence and dignity. It can be, ‘I can walk up to the mailbox again and get the mail. I couldn't do that. Before I'd be too breathless.’  It can be very modest but it changes lives.”

He continues, “I don't know what could be a greater advertising slogan for pulmonary rehab than to point to someone who was given 3 to 5 years left to live — and who is still very much alive 23 years later.”

For more info go to copdsos.org or copdfoundation.org

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