Steve Doocy left a tiny, 5,000-population Iowa town to become a popular anchor on America’s most-watched cable network, and he endured a great deal of heartbreak upon finding success.

Even as the “Fox & Friends” co-host neared his 70s, he showed no signs of slowing down. With a less enraged take on politics, Doocy has become the representative of the everyday conservative American who turns on Fox News in spite of its growing embrace of radical views. “He’s not there as part of the ideological project. He’s there as an affable morning TV host,” Fairleigh Dickinson University professor Daniel Cassino told The Washington Post in 2024.

Part of Doocy’s appeal stems from his fatherly demeanor. That’s not a mask he puts on before taking his seat next to Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade, and Lawrence Jones every morning. He is a family man through and through. But while Doocy has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, he has experienced a series of family tragedies that have shaped him — and even altered his life journey.

It was because of a terrifying diagnosis received by the Fox News anchor’s wife that Doocy became a New York Times best-selling author of cookbooks — yes, cookbooks, not politics or anything related to journalism. Through his family losses, Doocy learned powerful lessons that inspired him to dedicate even more time to his loved ones. Doocy has experienced a lot of highs, but he didn’t escape the lows. From losing both parents unexpectedly to standing by his wife’s side during a potentially fatal illness, Doocy knows about grief.

Steve Doocy lost his mother on a Christmas morning

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Steve Doocy isn’t a fan of the holiday season. It’s not the Christmas songs playing at every store or the ugly sweaters people parade around in all month that get him in a bad mood. For him, it’s personal. On Christmas morning in 1997, he received a call no one wants to get, ever, but especially not during the most magical time of the year. “My sister called, ‘Mom’s dead …’” he wrote in “The Happy Cookbook Series” (via Fox News). How could that be? He had just talked to his mother, JoAnn, eight hours earlier.

Doocy always talked to his mother on Christmas Eve to have her walk him through her gravy recipe. By then, he was pretty good at whipping up JoAnn’s famous gravy, but he had made a decades-old tradition out of it since he started calling her in college. “I was just using it as an excuse to call and show her that even though I was forty years old, a son always needs his mother,” he wrote. Since then, Doocy has been asking God for signs that his mother is watching over him.

His prayers have been answered a few times. The first happened at the funeral, where he was the lector. He noticed a bouquet of daisies on the altar, the flowers JoAnn had chosen for her wedding. Next to it was a packet of McCormick gravy mix. “I got goosebumps,” he shared.

Steve Doocy’s father also died unexpectedly

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The death of Steve Doocy’s mother left a big hole in the family. To try and heal, Doocy drew closer to his father, Jim Doocy, making sure to call him at least once a day. “It just felt good to touch base, because we both knew that someday one of us would not be around to pick up the phone,” he wrote in “The Simply Happy Cookbook” (via Fox News). Jim and JoAnn Doocy had plane tickets to Hawaii when she died, and Steve had wanted to take his dad on a trip ever since.

Jim decided he would like to visit Ireland and trace his family roots. But he wanted his brother, Phil, to come along — and Steve would have to foot the bill. So off they went. They couldn’t trace anyone because family records were destroyed in the 1922 fire during the Civil War. They didn’t find what they were looking for in Ireland, but they found something better. “It was the best week I ever had with my father,” he wrote (via Fox News).

They maintained their bond, with Steve honoring Jim when he was named Distinguished Kansan of the Year in early 2014. That was the last time he saw his father. Two days later, his sister called to tell him Jim had suffered a burst abdominal aortic aneurysm. “He hadn’t even been sick,” Steve wrote. Jim died on February 8, 2014.

Steve Doocy lost his beloved dog to cancer

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Steve Doocy and his family suffered another big loss after their beloved golden retriever, Charlie, was diagnosed with cancer. Even though Doocy’s children were all adults, they went home to be with Charlie during his final moments. “The kids came home from college and jobs to be at his side when the vet put him to sleep,” he wrote in “The Happy Cookbook Series.” That was the first real loss Mary, Sally, and Peter Doocy had experienced. “When my mom died, they were very little kids,” he penned.

The loss of the dog hit them differently. “When Charlie died, they were young adults and had spent most of their lives with him. He wasn’t a dog to them; he was their brother,” Steve continued. He also felt the grief deep in his heart. When he set out to write the first cookbook in his series, he knew Charlie would feature prominently in it. “That looks like our dog Charlie, who you will see several times in the cookbook!” he told an X, previously known as Twitter, user who shared a photo of herself reading the book next to her dog.

While it doesn’t appear that Steve and his wife, Kathy Doocy, have adopted another pooch, their love for them never faded. “The Doocys are dog people,” he captioned a 2015 Instagram post featuring him holding Charlie (seen above) in which he promoted the work of the North Shore Animal League America.

Steve Doocy’s wife suffered from a rare cancer

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Steve Doocy and Kathy Doocy were getting ready to treat themselves to a beach vacation in Florida when their world came crashing down. Amid their preparations, they went to get the prescriptions for their sunglasses checked, but the routine visit had a different outcome. Instead, the doctor saw a freckle in one of Kathy’s eyes and advised her to return in a few months. The doctor was a lot more worried this time around and called in a specialist. It wasn’t looking good.

The specialist urged Kathy to go to Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. “‘Sure,’ Kathy said and asked, ‘When?’ He said, ‘Right now,’” Steve wrote in “The Simply Happy Cookbook” (via Fox News). Kathy was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, a rare and aggressive type of eye cancer. Kathy received radiation treatment amid worries the cancer would spread to her lungs and liver. It was during that difficult time that Kathy and Steve decided to write a cookbook.

Fearing she might not have long to live, Kathy wanted her children to have access to their favorite meals. “The only thing I could really think of that I needed to do was to get my recipes together so that the kids would always have their happy memories,” she said in a 2018 clip featured on “Fox & Friends.” Luckily, she would continue to make her kids’ favorite dishes for years to come, as she was declared cancer-free after two years of treatment.