“Fox & Friends’” Steve Doocy will step back from full-time co-hosting duties and permanently decamp to Florida where he will remotely join colleagues Brian Kilmeade, Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones three times a week beginning later this month.
Doocy fought back tears on Thursday morning as he announced that it was his last day he would be alongside his co-hosts from their Midtown Manhattan studios.
“After decades of getting up at 3:30 and driving into NYC in the dark, today is the last day I will host the show…from the couch,” Doocy told viewers on Thursday’s broadcast. “I am not retiring, I’m not leaving the show. I’m still a host — but it’s time for a change.”
Doocy, who turns 70 next year, will now serve as “Fox & Friends’” full-time remote host, covering on-the-ground features like the show’s popular diner segments.
Recent examples include his live dispatch from Chicken N Pickle, a suburban Kansas City pickleball venue.
He will report from across the country while Kilmeade, Earhardt and Jones continue to host from the New York studio.
Doocy said he counted more than 6,800 pre-dawn wake-ups and over 31,000 hours of live television from the show’s iconic “curvy couch.”
He said he was relieved to be taking on a new role that allows him to trade sleepless mornings for time with his family — and a more flexible schedule.
“Do you remember the eighties Dunkin’ Donuts commercial where the alarm clock goes off at 3:30? ‘It’s time to make the donuts,’” Doocy said Thursday morning on-air.
“For the last 30 years when my alarm clock goes off—at 3:30—if it wakes up my wife Kathy, she always says, ‘It’s time to make the donuts.’ And I say, you’re right, ‘It’s time to make the donuts,’ and I get up and go to work.”
