Many Want to Know More About Tucker Carlson's Parents Following His Father's Death

Although he's been a political pundit for more than 20 years, Tucker Carlson has evolved quite a bit in that time. He was always conservative, of course, but he has moved farther and farther to the right, so much so that he became unemployable even on Fox News.

Following the news that his father had died, many wanted to learn more about Carlson's personal life, including who his parents are. Here's what we know.

Tucker is the elder son of Lisa McNear and Dick Carlson. Lisa was an artist, and married Dick in 1967. Nine years later, the two were divorced, and Tucker explained that his mother had left the family when he was 6 years old because she wanted to pursue a "bohemian lifestyle."

“Totally bizarre situation—which I never talk about because it was actually not really part of my life at all," he told The New Yorker.

Dick, meanwhile, seems to have exerted a strong influence on his son. Dick was a media executive who once directed Voice of America, the United States news service that operates around the world and is currently being defunded by Elon Musk. He was also the CEO of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and briefly served as the United States Ambassador for the Seychelles in George H.W. Bush's administration.

Although those were his most high-profile positions, Dick worked for decades as a journalist and magazine writer. His conservative worldview seems to have had a formative impact on Tucker, who very much followed in his father's footsteps, only to succeed at even higher levels than his father. Tucker, of course, is a second-generation political pundit who was certainly able to leverage his father's connections, especially early in his career.

Tucker recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that his father had died at the age of 84.

"Richard Warner Carlson died at 84 on March 24, 2025, at home in Boca Grande, Fla., after six weeks of illness. He refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet," he wrote in his post.

"By 1975, he was married with two small boys when his wife departed for Europe and didn’t return. He threw himself into raising his boys, whom he often brought with him on reporting trips. At home, he educated them during three-hour dinners on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, P.G. Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people," the obituary continues.

"He spoke to his sons every day and had lunch with them once a week for 30 years at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always prefaced by a dice game. Throughout his life he fervently loved dogs," he added, concluding by writing that Dick was the "toughest man" anyone in his family ever knew.