Ryan Seacrest Shares Update on His Dad After Cancer Diagnosis
Ryan Seacrest/Instagram
Ryan Seacrest shared an update with fans about his father after revealing that he was diagnosed with cancer. The Wheel of Fortune host celebrated a special milestone while sharing recent pictures.
“Happy birthday, Dad. Glad you’re enjoying a fried egg sandwich with mustard again this year for your bday breakfast! Here’s to many more. Love you,” he wrote on Instagram on July 27. His dad turned 81 on Sunday.
When he asked his dad what he wanted for his birthday, he replied, “I just want to get out of this chair. I just want to leave this house.’”
The first photo was of Seacrest, his dad, Gary, and his mom, Constance. The parents held up their plates of food as Ryan hopped in the frame and snapped the photo. Wine and candles sat on the table.
In the second photo, Ryan and Gary stood in front of a grill and smiled as they flipped burgers. The third photo was a throwback of the father/son duo dressed in suits. The fourth and final picture featured Gary stirring butter in a pot while wearing a bib that said “Fondue” with different food on it.
Fans wished the patriarch of the Seacrest family a “Happy birthday” in the comments. Many wished him well and said they’d be praying for him.
On July 21, Seacrest got teary-eyed when he shared his father’s diagnosis on his radio show, On Air With Ryan Seacrest. The topic came up as the American Idol host and his co-hosts celebrated their colleague Dennis Clark’s “victory story” of remission for prostate cancer.
In 2021, Seacrest revealed that Gary had been “battling cancer for several years” in a 2021 Instagram post. At the time, they thought it was non-detecable.
However, Seacrest shared that it “got worse and spread.” “When this happens to somebody or someone really close to you that you love, this is a hard thing to see, because the treatments that are commonly recommended can be barbaric to the system. They can cause so much damage to your body in other ways,” he said.
Seacrest revealed how Gary contracted pneumonia while undergoing chemotherapy and ended up in the ICU. He explained that he was filming American Idol‘s live shows last season when his sister, Meredith, called with the devastating news.
“[I’ve] never really spoken about this,” he said on his show, noting how he somehow finished the episode and immediately flew to Atlanta to visit his dad. “I didn’t even remember what I was saying [in the episode].”
“The night that I got there, the conversation they were having with [my dad] about an emergency surgery was a life or death conversation, and I’ve never seen my strong, very smart father with the look on his face that he had — and the concern, and looking at me to help guide what decisions should be made in this moment,” Seacrest said. Gary never got the surgery and spent weeks in the ICU. Seacrest got to visit his dad and did his radio show from his Atlanta hotel room.
Ryan said that his dad could not sit up, eat, drink water, or go to the bathroom. After a few weeks in the ICU, he finally got his strength back. Gary finally returned home with round-the-clock care.
“When you see a parent suffering and when you see them going through this and you don’t understand it yourself, you’re just listening to all the different doctors and trying to make sense of what they’re trying to suggest and do. I didn’t want to miss trying to understand who these people were that were taking care of my father.”
The TV host told his mom to relax and take it easy as well, as she is a cancer survivor.
“Cancer affects every one of us in some way, and it. And it sucks. And the treatments suck … treatments are tough. But I know he’s going to get through this,” Seacrest ended.
