Spoonauer began dating her Clerks co-star Jeff Anderson in 1993, and they were married for one year from 1998 to 1999.
According to the documentary Snowball Effect: The Story of Clerks, included on the 10th anniversary DVD release, Anderson proposed to her on the set of the film. Spoonauer's only other film credit is for the Gabe Torres movie Bartender.
Her brother Mike, on a fundraising page for Patient Advocate Foundation Inc., related that she had been long suffering from a chronic illness. Spoonauer had travelled to the Mayo clinic in 2014 for treatment - a Facebook post from that time revealed that she had already been seeing "countless other specialists over the last 7 years".
Clerks co-stars Brian O'Halloran and Marilyn Ghigliotti both shared the news and posted tributes to their personal Facebook accounts on May 23, 2017.
