Output author and description if description is not empty

Is it possible to only display the author’s name and description (aka bio) if the description contains text?

This code doesn’t work (it doesn’t return the name or description) but hopefully it can be edited to accomplish this goal:

<?php
$authorDesc = the_author_meta($post->ID, 'description', true);
if (!empty($authorDesc)) {
?>
<em>by <?php the_author(); ?></em>
<span><?php the_author_meta('description'); ?></span>
<?php } ?>