“Oh, Mother Where Art Thou?”
Carlson was born in San Francisco, California. He’s the eldest son of Richard Warner Carlson, former LA News anchor and US ambassador to Seychelles. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Carlson Senior was also the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and director of the Voice of America. Obviously, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
His biological mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, left her family when Tucker was only six years old and had very little contact with her kids after that. Four years after his mother left, his father remarried. This time, to Patricia Caroline Swanson, the heiress to the Swanson frozen foods empire. She is also the niece of Senator J. William Fulbright of the famous Fulbright Program. What an interesting background!
We Don’t Need No Education
Carlson attended St. George’s School, a private Episcopal boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. After graduation, he continued his studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he majored in history. His interest in journalism would spark further down the road. Although Carlson did get a formal college education, in 2018 he caused an uproar (which you’ll find he does quite often) after he posed the question “Is College Worth it?”, on his Fox News segment Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Carlson stated that obtaining a college degree has become "crushingly expensive" and added, "More students are failing, yet almost nobody fails. ... Colleges barely teach, yet every year they increase their fees.” While his comments did receive backlash from advocates of higher learning, there were many people, college-educated included, that agreed with his words.
High School Sweet Hearts
Carlson married Susan Andrews in 1991. On a Mother’s Day episode of the Fox News segment “Fox and Friends”, they told viewers how they’ve known each other since the 10th grade, at St George’s School. He said that they have been together for more than three decades so it was hard to imagine what it would be like not being together.
The Carls ons have four children together — two daughters and two sons. In an interview, Tucker Carlson referred to their kids as his “little angels”. On television, he may have a tough persona at times, but he’s really a devoted family man who enjoys spending time with his wife and children.
The Beginning
Everyone has to start somewhere. Tucker’s journalism career kicked off when he became a fact-checker for a national conservative journal called Policy Review — then published by The Heritage Foundation, but currently belongs to the Hoover Institution.
Carlson is proud of his beginning. He utilized those years to sharpen his investigative skills and learn from his more experienced colleagues. This would help climb the ranks in the news industry. As you will come to see, he has surely come a long way since then!
From Fact Checker to Writer
As a reporter, he traveled around the world to the most talked-about locations, contributing to magazines and newspapers such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and The Daily Beast. Quite an impressive list!
The publications appreciated his take on current events and international affairs, especially those that favored more conservative political views.