Glenn Beck Biography

Radio Personality / TV Personality

Glenn Beck's crying fits, conservative commentary, and demands that listeners "save this country from the radical leftists" made him one of the most popular radio and TV hosts of his era. Beck got into radio as a teen and spent a dozen years after high school working as a radio "shock jock." He has spoken opely of his addiction to alcohol and drugs in those years, but at age 30 he sobered up, remarried, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). When he landed a talk show at station WFLA-AM in Tampa, Florida in the year 2000, he had found his niche. In 2002 the show was picked up for national syndication, and by 2006 he was hosting his own TV show on CNN. In 2009 he moved his TV show to the Fox News Channel, where he was a perfect match for the network's right-wing viewers. Beck calls his shtick "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment," and both his TV and radio shows mix Beck's emotional warnings against government tyranny with his goofball humor and self-deprecating wisecracks. He continues to specialize in shock-talk; in one famous 2009 incident, he called President Barack Obama a "racist" and said Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." Beck makes regular public tours and has published books including An Inconvenient Book (2007), The Christmas Sweater (2008) and Common Sense: The Case Against Out-Of-Control Government (2009).

Extra credit: Beck produces his own content through his company, Mercury Radio Arts... Beck and his first wife, Claire, were divorced in 1994. They had two children, Mary (b. 1988) and Hannah (b. 1991). Mary has cerebral palsy. Beck married his second wife, Tania, in 1999, and became a Mormon the same year. They have two children, Raphe (adopted in 2004) and Cheyenne (b. 2006).