Since Bill Ritter announced his early-stage Alzheimer's diagnosis on-air in June, the longtime WABC anchor has done most of the talking. Now, his wife of nearly two decades, Kathleen Friery, is sharing how she first realized what they were facing wasn't ordinary forgetfulness.
Friery said she and Ritter began noticing his memory lapses growing more frequent back in early 2024, while he was still anchoring nightly newscasts. At first, they chalked it up to exhaustion. "We thought, 'okay, well maybe I'm working too hard,'" Ritter has said of that early period. Doctors initially suspected mild cognitive impairment, Friery said, but the confusion kept getting worse rather than improving with rest.
That steady decline, rather than any single alarming moment, is what finally sent them back for more testing. "A couple of people have said to me, 'So what's that moment like when you find out?'" Friery said. "Well, it's not a moment." She described the diagnosis instead as the end of a long, uncertain process - one that brought an unexpected sense of relief once it finally had a name. "This thing is real," she said.
Ritter has said his own first reaction was blunt: "Oh my God, it's going to really be hard on this family," followed by, "What is it going to mean for us and what do we do? Okay, we've got to deal with this." The couple married in 2008 and share a 17-year-old daughter, Ella; Ritter is also father to two adult children from a previous relationship. He's been candid that the weight of the diagnosis falls heaviest on those around him. "It's my kids and my wife who are the brave ones," he said.
Scripture calls believers to bear one another's burdens, and in Friery's clear-eyed account of a diagnosis with no single dramatic moment, that kind of quiet, committed love looks less like a headline and more like a daily choice.
Related: ABC7 Anchor Bill Ritter Steps Down After Alzheimer's Diagnosis | Bill Ritter Says He Noticed Alzheimer's Symptoms Two Years Before Telling Anyone
