Who was Dick Carlson’s wife Patricia Swanson Carlson? All about Tucker Carlson’s stepmom as dad passes away

Tucker Carlson's father, Richard Warner Carlson, who went by Dick, has died at the age of 84.

The conservative podcaster announced the news on X on Wednesday, noting that his father, a veteran journalist, succumbed to an unknown illness that he had been battling for six weeks. He died at his home in Boca Grande, Florida, on Monday.

In the wake of the tragedy, attention is turning to Carlson's stepmother, Patricia Swanson. According to a 2018 profile in the Columbia Journalism Review, Swanson and the elder Carlson tied the knot in 1979, when Tucker was 10. Patricia was the daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson, and the niece of Senator J. William Fulbright, which made her the heiress to the Swanson frozen-food wealth.

It was Dick Carlson's third marriage, and Swanson eventually legally adopted Tucker Carlson and his brother. The family lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and in a small town in Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. Patricia Swanson died 16 months before Dick did in 2023, and according to Tucker Carlson's obituary, she was "the love of his life" and "he mourned her every day."

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Everything we know about Tucker Carlson's father as the podcaster grieves his father on X:

In an obituary that came out on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson said of his father:

"He refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet."

Dick Carlson was an American journalist, diplomat, and lobbyist. In his career, he served as the director of the Voice of America from 1986 to 1991, as well as a newspaper and wire service reporter, magazine writer, documentary filmmaker, and television/radio correspondent.

He was born in Boston to parents Richard Boynton and Dorothy Anderson. He was eventually put up for adoption, and in 1943, the Carlson family took him in. He graduated from the Naval Academy Preparatory School, and through an ROTC program, he managed to enroll at the University of Mississippi. However, he did not graduate and was let go from the program in 1962.

At the age of 22, he began working as a "copy boy" for night city editor Glenn Binford at the Los Angeles Times. From there, he ventured into reporting for United Press International, before he eventually came to be hired full-time by KGO-TV and then as an investigative journalist for ABC News.

In his obituary on X, Tucker Carlson reflected on how his father was ever-present for him and his brother:

"By 1975, he was married with two small boys, when his wife departed for Europe and didn’t return. He threw himself into raising his boys, whom he often brought with him on reporting trips. At home, he educated them during three-hour dinners on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, PG Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people. He was a free thinker and a compulsive book reader, including at red lights. He left a library of thousands of books, most dog-eared and filled with marginalia. His reading and life experiences convinced him that God is real. He had an outlaw spirit tempered by decency."

By 1985, Dick had moved to Washington to work for the Reagan administration, where he began serving as the Voice of America before assuming the role of U.S. ambassador to Seychelles. Finally, he worked as CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Dick leaves behind his sons Tucker and Buckley, as well as daughter-in-law Susie, and five grandchildren.