As one of the most popular comedians and political satirists of the last two decades, Stephen Colbert has made people laugh and cringe on a nightly basis.
On Thursday, May 21, Colbert will undoubtedly share a few final jokes before signing off as host of The Late Show on CBS. The network has yet to reveal which guests will toast the 62-year-old during the final episode of the longtime talk show, which previously featured David Letterman.
Colbert has led the late-night staple since September 2015. While his comedic mind is unparalleled, supported by a razor-sharp wit and expansive intellectual curiosity, Colbert has also shown a great degree of introspection throughout his career—including after news of The Late Show’s cancellation. “I love what we do and I love the grind,” he told GQ in November 2025. “You can only do one of these shows, do the jokes every night, year after year for 20 years, if you give a damn at all about what you’re talking about. And I do. But there is a sense of relief that I might not have to put on the snorkel and get into the sewer every day.”
True keys to the former Colbert Report host’s success as a humorist have been humanity and empathy, two traits that were at least in part forged by early tragedy.
Colbert spent his early years in Maryland before his large family moved to just outside Charleston, South Carolina, when his father, a doctor and academic named James William Colbert, Jr., accepted a job at the Medical University of South Carolina. Stephen is the youngest of 10 siblings, a brood that included James III, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Jay, Elizabeth, Paul, and Peter.
The tight-knit Catholic family was shattered by a deadly plane crash that made national headlines and broke Stephen’s own little private world.
Colbert’s father and two brothers died in a plane crash that killed 72 people
On September 11, 1974, Colbert’s father and two brothers nearest in age, Paul and Peter, were passengers on a plane making a short flight from Charleston to Charlotte, North Carolina. Eastern Air Lines Flight 212, operating on a small DC-9 plane, had 82 people on board and seemed to be making a routine approach towards Douglas Municipal Airport. The flight never made it to Douglas, crashing three miles shy of its intended runway on a hillside covered with cornfields.
It was a foggy morning and the plane’s crew, according to cockpit recordings, lost track of the altitude. But it wasn’t just a matter of inclement conditions—the pilots likely erred in protocol as well. “The flight crew’s lack of altitude awareness at critical points during the approach due to poor cockpit discipline in that the crew did not follow prescribed procedure,” the NTSB wrote in its final report.
Regardless of the exact cause, the crash was catastrophic. Only 13 of the 82 people on board survived the initial impact, and in the end, 72 people died from the crash. Among the people lost were James, Paul, and Peter.
Colbert struggled for years after the accident
Colbert was just 10 years old when he lost his father and brothers. “There’s this big break in the cable of my memory at their death. Everything before that has got an odd, ghostly tone,” Colbert told Anderson Cooper in 2019. “I was personally shattered and then you reform yourself in this quiet, grieving world that was created in the house. My mother had me to take care of, which I think was sort of a gift for her, a sense of purpose at that point. But I also had her to take care of. It became a very quiet house, very dark, and ordinary concerns of childhood kind of disappeared.”
Colbert became something of a rebel, though in an unconventional way. While clearly smart, he was a terrible student, uninterested in studying or doing his homework. He wasn’t out making trouble, though—young Colbert was a sci-fi and fantasy geek, obsessed with playing Dungeons & Dragons and reading the Lord of the Rings. It’s an obsession he maintains to this day—his love of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novels always leads any “fun facts” list about the Emmy-winner.
Colbert struggled through high school, then hit a wall when he went away to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. “I didn’t really feel the loss until I was in college,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2012. “Then, I was in bad shape... I was just so sad about it.”
Although there were bleak times, Colbert didn’t lose himself entirely. “It was just me and Mom for a long time, and by her example I am not bitter,” he told GQ in 2015. “She was broken, yes. Bitter, no.”
Growing up Catholic, Colbert found himself turning to religion in an effort to understand such a senseless, painful tragedy. It began to help inform his worldview as he grew up and processed the emotions that came with the loss. More than anything, he learned acceptance, which he has described as not allowing yourself to be defeated by suffering.
“You gotta learn to love the bomb,” he told GQ. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”
Theater and improvisation changed Colbert’s life
While working through his feelings, Colbert began to excel once he found his passion. After two years at Hampden-Sydney, he transferred to Northwestern University near Chicago to concentrate on theater, then discovered improv comedy at the world-famous Second City Theater and its founder, Del Close. Colbert met his future comedy partners while in Chicago, including Amy Sedaris, with whom he created and starred in the cult hit show Strangers With Candy.
After that show ended, he joined the cast of The Daily Show. His career took off from there, turning him into a household name and injecting his biting-yet-joyful sense of humor into the mainstream. The comedian won six Emmys for his work on The Colbert Report, including two for Outstanding Variety Series. The show aired more than 1,400 episodes on Comedy Central from 2005 through 2014 and featured plenty of memorable moments—including an accidental mixup over lightsabers with Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Colbert used the tragedy to advocate for change on The Late Show
One of the most engaging interviewers on television, Colbert allows his interviewees the space to be honest and vulnerable. He too lets his guard down from time to time, an openness and empathy informed by the tragedy that changed his life all those years ago.
One of the most notable instances occurred on The Late Show following the death of NBA great Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others in a 2020 helicopter crash. Connecting the incident to his family’s own tragedy, he implored that helicopters be equipped with black box recorders so they could be safer for future passengers.
“Why compound their misery with mystery about what happened to their loved ones?” he said of Bryant’s family. “It’s better to know than not to know, because if we know, we can possibly stop this from happening to someone else in the future.”
Whatever Colbert does next in his career, it’s clear he has a unique perspective on personal loss that will help him continue to connect with guests and the audience.
“What do you get from loss?” he asked rhetorically in his conversation with Anderson Cooper. “You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being if it’s true that all humans suffer.”
Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.
