Ryan Seacrest breaks down in tears as he reveals heartbreaking family news
Gary was diagnosed 'years ago,' and although he underwent treatments including chemotherapy, the illness 'got worse and it spread.'
As his system was battered by the combination of the cancer and the measures taken to combat it, he contracted pneumonia and wound up in intensive care.
For four months Gary was confined to either the hospital or his home with 'full-time care,' his son revealed on his radio show On Air with Ryan Seacrest.
Now Gary is mere days away from his 79th birthday, and when Ryan asked him what he wanted for the occasion, he gave a heartrending reply.
'I just wanna get outta this chair. I just wanna leave this house,' he said according to Ryan, 50, whose eyes swam with tears as he remembered the request.
'I haven't shared this on the air because it has been very private for me and family, as it was something that was extremely hard to see with my father,' Ryan began.
'So my dad is about 80 years old, and I have a very close relationship with my father. And my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer years ago, and started his treatment. And it didn't get better. It got worse and it spread,' he shared.
'And 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 barbaic to the system [sic]. They can cause so much damage to your body in other ways,' he explained to his co-hosts and listeners.
'My father went and started his chemotherapy, and this is hard and you know people who have been through it. It didn't go well for him. He caught pneumonia. I was on an American Idol show live during last season and my sister called me and she said: 'Dad is in the ICU, and how fast can you get here?"'
Ryan went into a daze, and although he 'finished the show' he could not even 'remember what I was saying' for the rest of the taping, after which he 'went to the airport immediately and got on a flight and got to Atlanta overnight.'
He arrived to see his father and the doctors engaged in a 'life-or-death conversation' regarding a potential emergency surgery.
'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. And this is ICU, with pneumonia, with the cancer, after the chemo, so weak,' Ryan shatteringly remembered.
'The emergency surgery – he did not wanna have it. Thank God he didn't, 'cause it could cause complications,' he added.
In a detail even his co-hosts were previously unaware of, Ryan revealed that 'for weeks I was broadcasting from Atlanta. I moved everything there and I was broadcasting from a hotel room. And I was in the hospital every single day in the ICU.'
The Wheel of Fortune host reflected that '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 – it is a hard thing.'
He added: 'But I didn't want to miss trying to understand who these people were that were taking care of my father. He could not get up to sit. He could not eat. He could not drink water. He could not go to the bathroom.'
Ryan recounted: 'Weeks go by in the ICU, and finally he began to get some strength back. My mother was in Atlanta but I needed her to take a break from this because she also has cancer - and she's in remission, God bless her.'
He noted that 'when you're a kid, no one tells you how to handle this with your parents. You don't know. I don't know. I didn't know.
'And my father, after being absolutely miserable, miserable in ICU – not only having the cancer, but feeling like you-know-what, feeling bad, feeling weak, feeling sick, not eating – he slowly gained strength. He slowly was able to eat liquids, which he complained about,' Ryan said fondly.
'My dad, after several weeks, I remember the morning where we were gonna get him up out of his seat, his bed, and have him walk around the bay where the nurses are right outside the room. And he did it, but it was very difficult just to move around a little circle of these desks where the nurses are.'
Ryan became 'very, very close to the nurses,' whom he described as 'angels,' saying he sent them Italian food from the chain Maggiano's because he 'wanted them to have a bunch of good – something good because I appreciate the care.'
After 'months,' Gary was discharged from the hospital but remained homebound in Atlanta, under 'full-time care' and taking oxygen artificially.
'Weeks went by. He didn't leave his seat or a hospital or a home for four and a half months. I went back and forth over the weekends,' said Ryan.
Gary's 'birthday is in a few days and I asked him – first of all, to see him getting stronger, I was so happy. And I asked him: 'What would you like for this birthday?' And he said: 'I just wanna get out of this chair. I just wanna leave this house.''
Ryan dissolved in to tears as he divulged that one night earlier, he had gotten 'the most powerful good, happy picture from my dad. And my mother, who was with him, they went to a beach to sit outside. They just wanted to look at the water. They can't do much. But I saw him smile. I saw my mom smile.'
Gathering himself, he said: 'I'm embarrassed to – I'm just emotional. I am so – anyway, I watched them over the weekend send photos of smiling and happiness, and being together. They've been married for over 55 years and they've got each other.'
Gary's 'pneumonia's gone but his cancer's not, and so we have to go back into another treatment and fight this cancer, and so it's difficult,' Ryan shared.
The TV host has often spoken of his great affection for his parents Gary and Connie, whom he welcomed onto his morning program Live! with Kelly and Ryan in late 2022, shortly before he left that job ahead of becoming the host of Wheel of Fortune.
Gary, who was a lieutenant in the US Army before working as an attorney for 30 years in Atlanta and running his own law firm, is now president and CEO of his son's nonprofit the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, where Connie is the vice president of community affairs and hospital relations.
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