After the death of her first husband, news legend Katie Couric raised their daughters
— Ellie and Carrie Monohan — to become beautiful, successful young women. Here's
a closer look at their incredible evolution.
Ellie and Carrie Monahan were just five and one years old, respectively, when their father,
lawyer and NBC News legal analyst Jay Monahan, was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.
He died the following year in January 1998, and Katie Couric was forced to figure out
how to address the tragedy with incredibly young kids.
"Words, of course, will never describe how devastating this loss has been for me and
my daughters and all of Jay's family as well."
Opening up about the ordeal to Cure Today, she revealed:
"I did a lot of reading about how to talk to your children about cancer and according
to everything I read, it was important to be honest and to not guarantee that everything
was going to be okay."
So she kept it as real as she could when Ellie asked about her dad. She shared:
"I said, 'Gee, honey, I really hope so. The doctors and nurses are trying so hard to help
him and he's trying so hard to get better.' I just did not want to raise expectations
that he was gonna get through this when the prognosis was so bleak."
Following Jay's death, Couric kept the honest communication flowing. She said:
"I made sure Ellie went and talked to someone. I wish I had done more for Carrie when she
had turned an age where she could understand a little bit more."
She reiterated the importance of communication to the New York Post:
"Kids are incredibly resilient, but I believe they need a place to talk freely [...] a place
they can go to understand their feelings."
Ellie and Carrie may have been incredibly young when their father died, but they've
never forgotten him. As Katie Couric told Cure Today:
"Talking to them and keeping their dad's memory alive was incredibly important to me as they
aged."
So, she established a number of traditions for her girls. Speaking with the New York
Post, Couric revealed they always celebrate Jay Monahan's birthday and, over the years,
they've, quote, "sent balloons up to heaven," "read some of the letters written to the girls
after Jay died," and "watched a documentary about Jay by his brother." But they don't
just honor him one day a year; Couric told Closer in 2019:
"We still have photos of Jay all over the place and I try to keep him alive in our day-to-day
interactions."
The girls have also supported their mom's cancer advocacy, which included co-founding
the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal
Health. As Ellie recalled in a HuffPost op-ed in 2012:
"My mother [...] summoned the strength to turn my father's death into something more
significant — a mission to ensure that other families don't suffer the same fate."
Sharing how her, quote, "childhood was punctuated with bake sales and lemonade stands for colon
cancer research," she wrote:
"Being a part of this work and just witnessing my Mom's commitment has not only helped restore
me to 'the dailiness of life,' it has given mine greater meaning."
If you don't know much about Ellie Monahan, that's very much by design. Couric's oldest
daughter loves her privacy, and she's quite picky about what she shares with the public.
In addition to keeping her online presence under the radar, her mom told AOL in 2019
that her eldest once demanded she ask permission before speaking about her publicly. She told
the outlet:
"She's actually pretty low-key. When she was 16 and I did an interview with a magazine,
I told a story about her and she said, 'Mom, I'd really prefer that you not talk about
me in public, and if you do, can you just ask me first?' I was like, 'You're absolutely
right.'"
Calling Ellie, quote, "a private person," Couric added:
"But I also think that she knows that if I don't go too crazy — I'm not going to share
everything! — everyone is really happy."
Explaining why her daughter is happy to make concessions, she continued:
"Because of my situation — her dad died when she was 6 years old — I think she understands
that people care about her and wish her well and are invested in her in a really nice way.
I'm happy that my daughters turned out to be such exceptional people."
Katie Couric's estimated net worth hit $100 million as of March 2021, but don't expect
her to simply hand it over to her daughters. Rather, Ellie and Carrie Monahan have been
raised to be financially independent, even if they did have some qualms. Couric shared
with Good Housekeeping in 2012:
"I've told them they have to find their way. They can't depend on me [after college]. I'm
hard-nosed that way."
It's something Ellie, who went to college first, learned firsthand. Despite expressing
some "surprise" over Couric's decision to pretty much cut her off after graduation,
it didn't change her mother's mind. Couric recalled:
"I said, 'Welcome to the real world, honey. Of course, if they really needed something,
I'd help, but they have to establish their own identities, and that includes their own
financial identities."
Ellie Monahan enrolled at Yale University in 2009 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts
in American/United States Studies/Civilization. While there, she pursued a variety of interests
before finding her passion. She first worked as an editorial intern at Glamour, a counsellor
at Fernwood Camp for Girls, a crime strategies intern at the New York County District Attorney's
Office, and finally as an HBO intern in 2012. The Hollywood Reporter notes she made quite
the impression during her four-month stay at the network with sources telling the outlet:
"She worked harder than everyone else at the cable network and is remembered as one of
best interns the program has ever had."
The internship also introduced her to her passion and, after graduating from Yale, Monahan
studied screenwriting at AFI. She wrote two shorts in 2016, titled "Grams" and "Impaired,"
then directed and wrote an episode of "Liked" in 2017. She went on to become a writer's
assistant on 10 episodes of "Mr. Robot" and seven episodes of Amazon superhero drama "The
Boys". She also penned two episodes for the latter, 2019's "The Self-Preservation Society"
and 2020's "We Gotta Go Now."
Just like her big sister, Carrie Monahan is an Ivy League grad with an impressive resume.
She earned a 4.0 GPA from New York's Trinity School in 2014, then enrolled at Stanford
University and graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor's Degree in American Studies and French. While
there, she was awarded the Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities, the David M.
Potter Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Honors Research, and the David M. Kennedy
Prize, which is "Stanford's highest award for an honors thesis." She won the latter
for "'A Dream Remembered': Collective Memory and Ancestral Responsibility in Eufaula [yo-FOU-luh],
Alabama," which the university described as a, quote, "genre-crossing, book-length project"
and dubbed "a stunning, evocatively written, and absolutely unique accomplishment." In
awarding her the honor, Stanford announced:
"What makes the thesis so impressive is just how richly yet seamlessly Carrie weaves together
the results of her exceptionally ambitious, multi-year research forays [...] involving
everything from interviews and site visits, to local archival ephemera, to a wealth of
historical and historiographical studies and literary sources."
While still at Stanford, Monahan attended creative writing summer sessions at Columbia
University in 2016 and returned to the school full-time in 2018 for a Master of Science
in Journalism. She graduated in 2019 with honors.
The apple didn't fall far from the tree with Carrie Monahan, who chose to follow in her
mother's footsteps and pursue journalism. She's been working as a fact check producer
at Reuters since February 2020 where she "debunks viral misinformation that is circulating on
social media." She also has three writing credits at Reuters, most recently for a December
2019 piece titled "How can Generation Z compete with robots? Focus on the human touch," and
has been a research assistant to editor-in-chief Steve Adler since September 2019. Among her
accomplishments in that role, she "helped cover the fall 2019 turmoil surrounding WeWork;
wrote about neurodiversity in the workplace, the relevance of soft skills in the face of
automation and tips for Generation Z workers for Reuters Wealth."
Before that, Monahan was a public relations intern at Room to Read, a research intern
at Ark Media, and an essays editor for Stanford University's West Magazine. Her passion for
social justice really shone through when she was a communications intern at Southern Poverty
Law Center. She helped the civil right organization by answering press inquiries, organizing and
analyzing data on racial profiling by law enforcement, and writing the "manual for SPLC
on Campus program, used by student clubs across the country." She also "wrote briefings on
civil asset forfeiture, edited statements on immigrant detention centers, created [a]
step-by-step guide to the deportation process, [and] co-wrote [an] op-ed on labor conditions
of poultry plant workers in Georgia."
In September 2013, Katie Couric announced she was engaged to banker John Molner, who
is also the co-founder and CEO of Katie Couric Media. Sharing the happy news with Access
Hollywood, she gushed about the positive reaction from fans, saying:
"I think they know that I've had some sadness in my life [and] I think they're just happy
and excited that I'm embarking on this new chapter and I have to say, it's been very
gratifying."
Ellie and Carrie were also happy and excited, while also acknowledging a change in the family
dynamic. Couric admitted:
"I think they were a little [like] 'Wow,' because it's been the three of us for so long.
They really think the world of John. He loves them and so I think it's all good."
Couric and Molner tied the knot in a ceremony at their home in July 2014.
"It just felt right and perfect, so I just wasn't nervous at all."
Despite their initial surprise, Ellie and Carrie played a major role in the ceremony,
along with the groom's kids. As People reported:
"Molner's children Allie, 16, and Henry, 19, did readings from E.E. Cummings and Maya Angelou;
Couric's daughter Ellie, 22, read a love letter from Woodrow Wilson to his wife, while daughter
Carrie, 18, sang the Beatles' 'I Will.'"
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