Anderson Cooper is perhaps one of the most loved broadcasters of his generation. Apart from his success in his professional life, the well-known journalist has had a tough time in his personal life.
Keep reading to know more about Anderson Cooper and everything he has faced in life to get to where he is.
Anderson Cooper, the 56-year-old CNN anchor, took to Instagram to share an emotional moment for himself. He posted pictures of him and his late brother Carter. The first image he posted was a black-and-white photo of the two of them, followed by two pictures of Carter standing alone, one of him as a kid and the other of him as a teenager.
In the caption he simply wrote, “It is 35 years today since my brother, Carter Cooper, died. I think of him, and miss him, every day.”
Carter had only been 23 years old at the time of his death. He was two years older than his brother and died by suicide after jumping off the terrace wall of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s home, a 14th-floor Manhattan apartment. His death came a decade after the death of his father, Wyatt Emory Cooper.
Last year, Anderson Cooper gave a tour of his late mother’s New York City apartment and in the episode reflected upon how the death of his father and the suicide of his brother deeply impacted his life.
“Both of their deaths really changed me forever,” Anderson said about the loss he had faced. “I feel like a shadow of the person I was or was meant to be. After the shock of my dad’s death, I withdrew deep into myself. And 10 years later, when my brother died, I went deeper still.”
He shared a heartbreaking truth about his late mother’s home. He said, “This place has a lot of memories for me. A lot of memories of people who are no longer here. Just coming here, frankly, is hard.”
Despite all the time that has passed since he lost his father and brother, he says he still finds it very hard to talk about. He lost his mother later in June 2019, at the age of 95.
“I find it hard to talk about my dad and my brother,” he said. “It’s been 34 years since Carter’s suicide and the violence of it, the horror of it, it stuns me still.”
Cooper is now a father to two himself. He shares his sons, Sebastian, 17 months, and 3-year-old Wyatt, with co-parent Benjamin Maisani. Now Cooper is seeing the brotherly bond develop between his two boys who share the same 2-year age gap he shared with his own brother. But he has a different approach to parenting.
The journalist explained, “I was really worried about this. When I was growing up, when I came, my brother was like two years and four months older and every childhood photo I have is I’m very happy as a little baby and my brother’s chewing the inside of his lip.”
“With Wyatt, I’ve gone a different tact. I’m doing a slow roll with Sebastian. I didn’t want Wyatt’s life to suddenly cataclysmically change… Wyatt’s not on top of him every day,” he shared. “We go out a lot and stuff.”