From a young age, pretty much all of us have some idea about what we want to do when we grow up. Some want to be a police officer, others an astronaut, or maybe a professional athlete, singer, or dancer.
Even though we might have the dream – and should continuously pursue it – it doesn’t always end up like that. And for some, it just takes a lot of time to get there, resulting from the fact that you should never stop dreaming.
For Sean Hannity, that was the case. As a young child, he started his first job in media, delivering papers. It might not have been the most significant, most prominent work, but nonetheless important.
Sean Hannity – from paperboy to Fox host
It took many years before Hannity went into the media business. And now, he’s become a multimillionaire through his shows, both on television and the radio.
At the same time as Hannity has become a public figure – and reportedly one of Donald Trump’s closest friends – not much is known about his private life.
Hannity has chosen to be restrictive with his life outside the spotlight, but reports about his latest romance are out.
This is all you need to know about him!
On December 30, 1961, Sean Hannity was born in New York City. His parents, Hugh and Lillian, were first-generation Irish immigrants. He grew up in the Long Island suburb of Franklin Square.
Hannity’s father worked as an officer in the family court system, and his mother as a corrections officer. As a youngster, he attended Catholic school – and in fact, he started his career in the media business very early. At 8, Sean Hannity pedaled around in Long Island as a newspaper delivery boy, and four years later, he started working on several restaurants.
First job in radio
The youngest child and only son of first-generation Irish immigrants Hugh and Lillian, Hannity grew up in Franklin Square, a Long Island suburb of New York. Both of Hannity’s parents worked in the justice system: Lillian as a corrections officer and court stenographer and Hugh as an officer in New York City’s family court system.
Hannity graduated from high school in Uniondale, New York, and continued to work at restaurants to save money for college. He first attended Adelphi University on Long Island before switching to both New York University and the University of California Santa Barbara. However, he never graduated from college.
The money had run out along the way, and Hannity turned to work in the construction industry.
“It was 20 years of my life I did really hard work,” he told the NY Post. “I never forget that I’ve done the real work in life and know how hard things really can be.”
After leaving college, Sean Hannity started his career in media. Today, there are very different opinions on him and his views, which is entirely normal when it comes to his job as a political commentator.
However, as he began his career in radio, Hannity became quite controversial after just a year.
Sean Hannity – become a political commentator
Sean has had a fascination with radio since he was a young kid. He began hosting his first radio talk show in 1989 on the college radio station KCSB FM in Santa Barbara. However, they took him off the air a year later due to a controversial remark about a lesbian mother.
So instead of staying in California, Hannity moved to Alabama, where he was employed at the conservative AM station WVNN in Athens. Later, he worked at the radio station WGST in Atlanta.
But being a politically conservative radio commentator wasn’t the easiest thing. As a result, Hannity felt that he had some problems finding his voice.
“It develops over time. It’s not like a light goes on, and you find your own way of doing and saying things,” he told the NY Post, comparing his early days in the late 1980s to Howard Stern’s character’s foray into radio in the movie Private Parts. “You try to sound like a radio guy. And meanwhile, you sound like a dork novice trying to sound like a radio guy.”
Far from the big television deal he has today; Sean Hannity was still trying to find his way in the mid-1990s. Eventually, he left a radio station job in Huntsville, Alabama. A local newspaper’s editorial about his departure read: “Goodbye to the talk show host from hell.”
Hannity might have left Alabama without a radio gig, but more importantly, that’s where he met his future wife, Jill Rhodes.
Everyone didn’t love Hannity, but at the same time, plenty of people thought he was great.
“I’m surprised they didn’t fire me”
In October 1996, Fox News was founded and launched to millions of cable subscribers. Sean Hannity was one of the political commentators that got a job with the network.
As of now, we all know that Sean Hannity is still at Fox News. However, in the beginning, the host himself didn’t think he would last long.
“I’m surprised they didn’t fire me. I was God awful when I first started. I was terrible,” Hannity said, recalling his first review by Newsday’s Verne Gay. “He said, ‘Alan Colmes looks funereal, and Sean Hannity has a bad haircut and has no business being on TV.’”
Alongside the late Alan Colmes – who died in 2017 – Sean Hannity hosted Hannity & Colmes. As the network relocated to New York City, He also started working at the radio station WABC, hosting The Sean Hannity Show. The show was later broadcasted on more than 500 radio stations in the US, which turned Hannity into an extensive profile for Fox News.
Later on, Hannity hosted the Fox News show Hannity’s America, and as his former co-host Alan Colmes left in 2009, he resumed with the show Hannity.
Today, Sean Hannity is one of Fox News’s biggest stars and conservative political commentators, and he is getting paid for it. According to a 2020 Forbes report, Hannity earns about $25 million a year.
Sean Hannity – family, children, net worth
“I think I work harder now than I ever did. I find ways to work harder and smarter,” he said in October of last year.
Sean Hannity explained that once he’s done with his show around 10 pm, he instantly grabs something to eat and does research for the next day’s show.
“I sleep about four or five hours, maybe, I get up in the morning and do a hard workout with mixed martial arts,” Hannity added, saying that he works out for 90 minutes at least four days each week. “I live like a Marine all week long, it’s pretty intense.”
As of today, Sean Hannity has a net worth of around $300 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
As Sean Hannity rose to fame through radio, he also met his wife, Jill Rhodes, in Alabama. She was working as a political columnist for the Huntsville Times at the time.
“She was really talented — gifted, but I really just fell in love with the little picture in her column,” he told Newsmax in 2011.
The couple started dating. However, many people were against the two getting married, including their pastor.
Divorced in 2019
“Everyone that she worked with at her newspaper warned her not to marry me,” Hannity recalled. “‘You mean that guy on the radio?’ Because it was Huntsville, Alabama, and I’m Sean, the New York talk-radio [guy].”
In 1993, Sean Hannity and Jill Rhodes tied the knot. The couple welcomed two children in son Sean Patrick Hannity (born in 1998) and daughter Merri Kelly Hannity (2001).
Besides working on Fox News, Sean Hannity has written several books. He dedicated his 2002 book, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism, to Rhodes and their children.
“They are the ones who put up with the long work hours I needed to invest in this project,” Hannity wrote in the acknowledgments. “They are the ones who make it worth doing — and make my life complete and happy on more levels than I can explain. I am blessed to have them in my life.”
Unfortunately, Jill Rhodes and Sean Hannity divorced in 2019 after more than 20 years of marriage.
“Sean and Jill are committed to working together for the best interests of their children. Amicable agreements were entered into over four years ago between Sean and Jill. They maintain a close relationship as parents to their children,” a joint statement read.
“Neither will have any further comments and ask for sake of their children that their privacy be respected.”
Rumored romance with Fox host Ainsley Earhardt
But it didn’t take long before rumors of Sean Hannity’s new romance spread.
A year later, Vanity Fair reported that Sean Hannity had started dating Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. A source told the news outlet that the two had “been seeing each other very secretively for years.” People reported the same information.
“He’s very private because he’s very famous, and he’s very controversial,” an insider said, “but it’s been an open secret that they have been seeing each other.”
Both Earhardt and Hannity quickly denied the reports that the two were involved in a relationship.
“Right now, I am focused on raising my daughter, and I am not dating anyone,” Earhardt, a Fox & Friends host, said through a network spokesperson. “As anyone at Fox News will tell you, Sean is a wonderful person, and whomever he chooses to date will be extremely fortunate.”
In his own statement through a spokesperson, Hannity said: “I do not discuss my personal life in public.”
“They are quarantining together”
In 2019, Ainsley Earhardt also went through a divorce with her ex-husband Will Proctor. The couple was married for seven years. They share a daughter, Hayden, born in 2015.
Sources told Page Six that she and Hannity lived close to each other during the pandemic, with Sean residing on Long Island and Earhardt renting a house nearby.
Further, Sean Hannity is said to have a studio at home, which, according to the Page Six Source, has been used by Ainsley to do her remote broadcasts for Fox & Friends.
“They are 100 percent dating.” Yet another went further, “Sean and Ainsley have been together for a while, they are quarantining together in Oyster Bay. They have been seen together many times in the area.”
After years of rumors and speculation, Earhardt and Hannity have allowed their intimate relationship speak for itself, going on dates in plain sight and attending events as a couple rewrite. In April 2023, Daily Mail published exclusive images of Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt.
According to the newspaper, the couple appear to have comfortably settled into domestic life, with the couple frequently seen stepping out and traveling together as a family unit.
