Glenn Beck

Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative political commentator, radio host, entrepreneur, and television producer.

He is the CEO, founder, and owner of Mercury Radio Arts, the parent company of his television and radio network TheBlaze.

He hosts the Glenn Beck Radio Program, a talk-radio show nationally syndicated on Premiere Radio Networks.

In 1979, when Beck was 15, his mother drowned in Puget Sound while fishing with a man in Commencement Bay west of Tacoma.

Her companion also drowned; police investigators believed that one of the victims may have fallen overboard and the other drowned in a rescue attempt.

Beck has called his mother's death a suicide in interviews.

After their mother's death, Beck moved to his father's home in Bellingham, where Beck graduated from Sehome High School in 1982.

Beck also regularly vacationed with his maternal grandparents, Ed and Clara Janssen, in Iowa.

In the aftermath of his mother's death and his stepbrother's subsequent suicide, Beck has said he used "Dr. Jack Daniel's" to cope.

At 18, after graduating from high school, he moved to Provo, Utah, and worked at radio station KAYK.

Feeling he "didn't fit in", Beck left Utah after six months, taking a job at Washington, D.C.'s WPGC in February 1983.

While working at WPGC, Beck met his first wife, Claire.

They married in 1983 and had two daughters, Mary and Hannah.

Mary developed cerebral palsy as a result of a series of strokes at birth in 1988.

The couple divorced in 1994 amid Beck's struggles with substance abuse.

He is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and has said he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

By 1994, Beck was suicidal, and imagined shooting himself to the music of Kurt Cobain.

He credits Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) with helping him achieve sobriety.

He said he stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis in November 1994, the same month he attended his first AA meeting.

Beck later said that he had gotten high every day for the previous 15 years, since the age of 16.

In 1996, while working for a New Haven area radio station, Beck took a theology class at Yale University, with a written recommendation from Senator Joe Lieberman, a Yale alumnus who was a fan of Beck's show at the time.

Beck enrolled in an "Early Christology" course, but soon withdrew, marking the extent of his post-secondary education.

Beck then began a "spiritual quest" in which he "sought out answers in churches and bookstores".

As he later recounted in his books and stage performances, Beck's first attempt at self-education involved reading the work of six wide-ranging authors, constituting what Beck jokingly calls "the library of a serial killer": Alan Dershowitz, Pope John Paul II, Adolf Hitler, Billy Graham, Carl Sagan, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

During this time, Beck's Mormon friend and former radio partner Pat Gray argued in favor of the "comprehensive worldview" offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an offer that Beck rejected until a few years later.

Beck also hosts the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN, from January 2009 to June 2011 on Fox News and now airs on TheBlaze.

Beck has authored six New York Times–bestselling books.

In April 2011, Beck announced that he would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News, but would continue to team with Fox.

His last daily show on Fox was June 30, 2011.

Beck launched TheBlaze in 2011 after leaving Fox News.

He hosts an hour-long afternoon program, The Glenn Beck Program, on weekdays, and a three-hour morning radio show; both are broadcast on TheBlaze.

Beck is also the producer of TheBlaze's For the Record.

Beck has received both praise and criticism, characterized by his supporters as a defender of traditional American values and by his detractors as a demagogue.

During Barack Obama's presidency, Beck promoted conspiracy theories about Obama, his administration, George Soros, and others.

Beck was born in Everett, Washington, the son of Mary Clara (née Janssen) and William Beck, who lived in Mountlake Terrace, Washington, at the time of their son's birth.

The family later moved to Mount Vernon, Washington, where they owned and operated a downtown bakery.

In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter placed Beck on its Digital Power Fifty list.

He is descended from German immigrants who came to the United States in the 19th century.

Beck was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Mount Vernon.

Beck and his sister moved with their mother to Sumner, Washington, attending a Jesuit school in Puyallup.