LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Jenna Wolfe has experienced significant ups and downs in recent years. In September 2021, she and her wife of 10 years, Stephanie Gosk, decided to separate. They got married in 2013 and became parents to their daughter, Harper, the same year. They welcomed their second daughter, Quinn, in 2015.
"For the first time in my life, I don't have answers to big important questions. And I have to be okay with that," Wolfe told People. She said that the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic strained her relationship with her ex-wife. "Covid was really tough, because we both worked from home," Wolfe, who was working as an anchor for Fox Sports at that time, explained. While Gosk was working for NBC, both of them had to do live shots from their apartment in midtown Manhattan.
'It was better that Steph moved out'
"There's a lot of beautiful ego that comes with one person being on television," Wolfe said, adding, "But when there's two people on television, plus both kids trying to do Zoom school in a Manhattan apartment, there's just no space anywhere."
"We decided after that, in order to preserve the relationship, it was better that Steph moved out," Wolfe explained, adding that they were "still great friends, still loving parents" to nine-year-old Harper and eight-year-old Quinn.
The pandemic posed an even greater challenge for Wolfe after her mother was diagnosed with aggressive Stage 3 breast and lymph node cancer. "She endured chemo, radiation, loss of her hair and fingernails," Wolfe said, adding, "And nobody except my dad could be there with her because everybody was quarantined or isolated." Wolfe vividly recalled a heart-wrenching day when her parents stood on the street, looking up at her bedroom window, yearning to catch a glimpse of her and her daughters.
"My mom is young and strong and beautiful and wonderful, and here was this completely sickly woman. I called my girls over and we were waving. I was sandwiched in between my parents and my kids, separated by this glass. It broke my heart because it was so intense," Wolfe recalled.
Wolfe's mother eventually beat cancer. Expressing her joy, Wolfe said, "Knock on wood, she made it out." However, when her mother tested positive for the BRCA gene, which is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, she advised Wolfe to undergo the same test. She followed her mother's advice and discovered that she too had tested positive for the gene.
'My cancer risk was at 44%'
Wolfe then made the decision to undergo a preventive hysterectomy and double mastectomy. She said, "There was no cancer in our family, but we ran all the numbers: I'm in my late forties, and my mom had cancer, and I'm an Ashkenazi Jew. My cancer risk was at 44%. That's almost 1 in 2. I was walking around like thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't gotten cancer yet."
Wolfe continued, "There was no hesitation about the surgeries. When I get something in my head, it's, let's just do it, let's move forward. And that's how I have lived my life."
Recalling the ordeal, Wolfe said, "I was in excruciating pain, doubled over for 10 days. I've had really bad complications with both surgeries. So there was no correlation between the shape that I was in and how the surgeries went."
She recalled one scary night when she was home alone with her children. "I started bleeding really badly, and we didn't know why. And I had to go to the ER, but nobody was here to stay home with them. And I had to leave them alone. Steph eventually came over. It's been a really brutal couple of months," she admitted, adding, "The way I see myself has always been strong, strong, strong. And I felt broken. I felt really broken and weak and tired and sluggish and sick. And I was hurting and I hated the feeling."
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