When Madonna Badger suffered the unthinkable loss of her three young daughters and her parents in a Christmas Day house fire, she never imagined she’d ever find happiness again.
She spiraled into a nearly suicidal depression, committed herself to a psych ward and then tried to cope by working with orphans in Thailand.
She easily could have given up, but instead she found a way to love again — and gleefully announced on Facebook Tuesday that she just got married.
“We did it! Bill and I eloped today!” Badger cheered.
Badger, 50, posted two photos of her and real-estate broker William Duke, as they beamed together on the steps of St. John-St. Matthew-Emanuel Lutheran Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
We did it! Bill and I eloped today!
- Madonna Badger on Facebook
Badger wore a knee-length white dress under a black blazer and clutched a bouquet of white roses, while Duke, 61, wore a tan suit, white shirt and green tie.
The couple’s friends and admirers responded with hundreds of “likes” and congratulatory messages, including one that said, “Yay for both of you!! You deserve all God’s deepest blessings and joy overflowing.”
A woman who was house-sitting at Duke’s Park Slope home said he and Badger left for their honeymoon on Wednesday but that she didn’t know where they went.
Badger, a former ad executive whose clients included Calvin Klein, revealed her engagement to longtime friend Duke in an article she wrote last year for Vogue.
At the time, she said they were planning to marry in September.
The heart-wrenching memoir also detailed Badger’s struggles in dealing with the 2011 fire that killed daughters Lily, 9, and Sarah and Grace, who were 7-year-old twins, along with her parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson.
“The pain is just so huge that sometimes it feels like a prison cell,” Badger wrote.
“But trying really hard to not feel sorry for myself makes me feel good. Being of service helps the pain to go away, if only for a little while, and giving and receiving love makes me feel good.
“Basically, I go to wherever the light is, because anything else is darkness, and it can be a deeply black darkness,” she added.
Authorities said the deadly blaze started when Badger’s then-boyfriend, contractor Michael Borcina, put a bag of ashes from the fireplace into the outside mudroom of Badger’s Stamford home, which was undergoing renovations at the time.
Only Badger and Borcina, who was overseeing the work on the Victorian, escaped.
Badger’s ex-husband, Matthew Badger, later filed a wrongful-death and negligence suit against Borcina and defendants including the town of Stamford.
Matthew alleged there were no smoke detectors in his ex-wife’s home, which “had become a firetrap as a result of months of substandard construction.”
Lawyers for Matthew and Borcina didn’t return calls for comment.