TV journalist Katie Couric has opened up about the frightening health scare she suffered while staying at her in-laws’ Aspen retreat—revealing that doctors initially thought her symptoms were a sign of a stroke.
Couric, 69, recounted the frightening June 27 ordeal in a Substack post, explaining that she was ultimately diagnosed with transient global amnesia—a condition that left her unable to remember who the president was or even what year it was. At one point she was even completely unaware that she’d recently welcomed a newborn granddaughter.
In the essay, titled “A Day I’ll Never Remember,” Couric explained that she and her husband, John Molner, were staying at his parents’ Aspen condo when the unsettling symptoms suddenly began, noting that the day she suffered the scare began much like any other.
She recalled leaving her in-laws’ condo to work out, taking a walk to the farmers market, where she purchased “beautiful peaches and nectarines, a big bag of kettle corn and a cute straw hat I really didn’t need.”
Couric remembers then traveling with her husband to the Aspen Ideas Festival, where she was due to take part in a series of panels, which included an AI chat with Amy Webb and a conversation about journalism with Columbia University’s Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb, as well as journalist Aaron Parnas, and The Argument founder Jerusalem Demsas.
To the casual observer—and even to Molner—nothing appeared out of the ordinary about Couric’s participation in the panels. However, she admitted that she now remembers nothing about either one.
“I remember nothing from either panel. I have met Jelani and know Aaron a bit, but right now, I couldn’t pick Amy or Jerusalem out of a lineup,” Couric penned.
She confessed that she had “no idea what we talked about, or of what occurred when the panels ended.”
“I wasn’t sure of the month. I thought it was 2024. And I believed Joe Biden was president,” she added.
According to the Mayo Clinic, transient global amnesia is a sudden, temporary episode of memory loss that most commonly affects middle-aged and older adults who are otherwise alert and healthy.
During an episode, a person is unable to form new memories, causing recent events to vanish from their recollection.
They may also become disoriented, forgetting where they are or how they arrived there.
Sharing his perspective on the incident, Molner admitted that he “noticed nothing unusual in the conversation or Katie’s role” during the panels, and was only alerted to the fact that something was amiss when an intern approached him to let him know “Katie wasn’t feeling well.”
“Having spent a lot of time in Aspen since I was a kid, I assumed Katie was dehydrated and suffering from some form of altitude sickness—something common among visitors to a town that’s about 7,900 feet above sea level,” Molner penned.
Couric was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where she informed the medical staff that she could not remember the names of her grandchildren or daughter Carrie‘s boyfriend.
Doctors immediately began a standard stroke protocol, performing an MRI on the journalist and author to rule out a more severe condition. This scan led to her diagnosis of transient global amnesia.
“Which means you lost your short-term memory,” her doctor told her in a note. “It will return tomorrow. You are safe!”
Couric revealed that her memory did indeed return to normal the following day; however, she is still unable to recall several hours of her day on June 27.
“While this was a freaky occurrence, it could have been much more serious. So ultimately, I’m relieved—even though several hours of a Saturday in June will always be missing for me,” Couric said. “So for me, from about noon on Saturday until at least 7 p.m., what happened will stay in a big, black hole.”
The incident came just a few weeks after Couric opened up about her plans for a fun-filled summer at her longtime beach house in East Hampton, NY, which she purchased in 2006.
“I’m gonna spend a lot of time at the beach this summer, I was able to renovate a house I bought, gosh, almost 20 years ago that needed a bit of a facelift,” she told People at the time.
“I’m really looking forward to spending time out there and we’re going to have a Couric family reunion in August, which we have dubbed ‘forced family fun.’ I’ll be able to see a lot of family members who are coming and play a lot of pickleball,” she added.
Although her primary residence is in New York City, Couric spends much of her time at her beach house, which is the same spot she and Molner tied the knot in 2014.
According to The New York Times, the property comes complete with a room dedicated to her late husband Jay Monahan‘s passion for history.
“I wanted there to be a place for everything that was important to Jay,” she told the outlet of her late spouse, with whom she shared children Ellie and Carrie.
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