Stephen Colbert Biography, Age, Height, Net Worth, Wife & The Late Show

Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Stephen Colbert in 2025.

Stephen Colbert spent eleven years behind the desk at The Late Show. Then, on May 21, 2026, he said goodbye. Less than six months later, he was back in the news for a very different reason: a fire alarm cut short his talk at Harvard, and he was walked out past a picket line of striking graduate students.

It was a strange week for a man who built his career on talking about the news. Colbert is 62 now. He spent twenty years playing a fake pundit on cable, then eleven years as himself on network TV. This is his story so far.

Quick Facts	Stephen Colbert
Full name	Stephen Tyrone Colbert
Born	May 13, 1964, Washington, D.C.
Age	62
Nationality	American
Zodiac	Taurus
Height	5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)
Profession	Television host, comedian, writer
Years active	1984–present
Education	Northwestern University (BA, 1986)
Parents	James William Colbert Jr. and Lorna Colbert
Siblings	Ten (youngest of eleven children)
Spouse	Evelyn McGee (married 1993)
Children	Three
Net worth	About $75 million (estimate)

The youngest of eleven, and the year everything changed

Stephen Tyrone Colbert was born on May 13, 1964, in Washington, D.C. He was the youngest of eleven children in a Catholic family. His father, James William Colbert Jr., was an immunologist and a medical school dean. His mother Lorna kept house. The family moved to James Island, outside Charleston, South Carolina, and that is where he grew up.

When he was ten, his life broke in two. On September 11, 1974, his father and his two brothers closest to him in age, Paul and Peter, died in a plane crash. Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 went down as it tried to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. The three of them were on their way to enrol Paul and Peter at school in Connecticut.

Colbert has talked about that loss for years. He has said that after it, nothing made sense for a long time, and he shut himself off. He found comfort in books instead, above all the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He also fell hard for Dungeons & Dragons, which he later called an early lesson in acting and making things up on the spot.

He went to Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, where he acted in school plays. As a boy he had hoped to study marine biology. But surgery to fix a badly damaged eardrum left him deaf in his right ear, and it ruled out a career that needed scuba diving. He went to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia in 1982 to study philosophy. After two years he moved to Northwestern University in Chicago as a theatre major, and he graduated in 1986.

Image via Montclair Film Festival / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Stephen Colbert at the Montclair Film Festival.

Chicago, Second City and the long way round

Colbert wanted to be a serious actor. At Northwestern he fell in with the improv crowd instead, including a young David Schwimmer in a group called the No Fun Mud Piranhas. He also studied under Del Close, the improv teacher who shaped a whole generation of Chicago comics.

After college he needed work. He turned down an unpaid internship at Late Night with David Letterman. A friend who worked at Second City's box office got him a job answering phones and selling souvenirs. Staff could take classes free, so he signed up. Before long he was in the touring company, starting out as an understudy for Steve Carell. It was there he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. The three of them did not get on at first. Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, and Colbert thought Dinello was a thug. They became close friends on the road, and they worked together for years after.

The trio made a sketch show for Comedy Central, Exit 57, which ran in 1995 and 1996. It lasted only twelve episodes, but it was well reviewed and earned five CableACE nominations. Colbert then spent six months on The Dana Carvey Show in 1996, a show that lost its sponsors after one episode and was cancelled after seven. He worked again with Sedaris and Dinello on Strangers with Candy, the Comedy Central series about a 46-year-old dropout going back to high school, which ran from 1999 to 2000.

The Daily Show, then a fake pundit of his own

In 1997 Colbert joined The Daily Show as a correspondent, hired on a trial basis by producer Madeline Smithberg. The show was still hosted by Craig Kilborn then. Colbert stayed on when Jon Stewart took over in 1999, and the correspondent pieces made his name. He voiced Ace in The Ambiguously Gay Duo, the cartoon he and Robert Smigel had carried over from The Dana Carvey Show.

In 2005 he left to host his own show, The Colbert Report. He played a blowhard conservative pundit, a send-up of cable news hosts like Bill O'Reilly. In the first episode he coined the word "truthiness". It became the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year. The show won Emmys for its writing and for best variety series, and a Peabody Award in 2008.

The character took him strange places. In 2006 he performed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, in character, in front of President George W. Bush. The routine split the room and made the show one of Comedy Central's biggest hits. In 2010 he and Stewart headlined the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall. In 2011 he started the Colbert Super PAC, a joke that turned into a real lesson in campaign finance law.

Year	Career moment
1986	Graduates from Northwestern; joins Second City in Chicago
1995	Exit 57 debuts on Comedy Central
1996	Cast member and writer on The Dana Carvey Show
1997	Joins The Daily Show as a correspondent
1999	Strangers with Candy begins (runs to 2000)
2005	The Colbert Report launches; coins "truthiness"
2006	White House Correspondents' Dinner; Time 100 list
2010	Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear with Jon Stewart
2011	Starts the Colbert Super PAC
2014	The Colbert Report ends after nine years
2015	Takes over The Late Show from David Letterman
2017	Hosts the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards
2025	The Late Show wins the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series
2025	CBS announces The Late Show will end in May 2026
2026	Final episode airs on May 21; show wins the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series
2026	Harvard talk with Yo-Yo Ma cut short by a fire alarm (November 5)

Taking over from Letterman

When The Colbert Report ended in December 2014, CBS hired Colbert to take over The Late Show from David Letterman, who was retiring. The new show started on September 8, 2015, at the Ed Sullivan Theater. This time Colbert played himself, not a character. He kept the politics, but the jokes came from a real person, not a parody.

The show ran for eleven seasons and won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Talk Series in 2025 and Outstanding Variety Series in 2026. He hosted the Emmy Awards themselves in 2017. From 2024 to 2025 he also produced the late-night game show After Midnight with his wife Evie.

He was not the only late-night host making news in 2026. Jimmy Fallon turned The Tonight Show into a post-football Sunday fixture, with the Focker In-Law cast on his couch tonight.

Then, on July 17, 2025, CBS announced that The Late Show would end after the 2025–26 season, and the whole Late Show franchise would be retired. The network said the move was purely financial. Many commentators suggested something else: that his constant criticism of Donald Trump's second administration played a part. Colbert told viewers he had only been told the night before. The last episode aired on May 21, 2026, with Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Bryan Cranston, Ryan Reynolds and Paul Rudd among the guests.

The Harvard night that ended early

On Thursday, November 5, 2026, Colbert took the stage at Harvard's Sanders Theatre with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The talk, "Arts for Life's Sake", was part of the university's Learning from Performers series, marking its 50th year. About forty minutes in, during the question-and-answer part, a fire alarm went off. The sold-out crowd was sent outside, and the event never resumed.

Outside, about fifty members of the Harvard Graduate Students Union were picketing. The union has been on strike since October 27, asking for higher wages, protections for non-citizens and measures against workplace harassment. Its members had asked Colbert and Ma to cancel in solidarity, and they went ahead anyway. The union said the alarm had nothing to do with its picket, and that it had no idea what caused it. No cause was found.

It was an awkward look for Colbert, who had stood with writers during the 2023 writers' strike and helped start Strike Force Five, a podcast by late-night hosts to support their striking staff. He has not said much about the Harvard night in public since.

Image via Amanda Cogdon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Stephen Colbert with his wife Evelyn McGee at the Time 100 event in 2006.

Evie, the kids and life away from the desk

Colbert married Evelyn McGee in 1993. They met in Charleston, and she goes by Evie. They have three children: Madeleine, Peter and John. The family lives in Montclair, New Jersey. Evie has worked with him behind the scenes for years, including producing After Midnight with him.

His sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch ran for Congress in South Carolina in 2013, in a special election for the Charleston-area seat. She lost to Mark Sanford. Colbert, who is open about his Catholic faith, has said his parents taught their children that they could question the Church and still be Catholic.

He is worth about $75 million, by the usual published estimates. That is a guess, not a filed figure. He earned about $6 million a year when he took over The Late Show, and about $15 million a year after a new deal in 2019. His books have sold well too: I Am America (And So Can You!) topped the New York Times bestseller list in 2007.

Honour	Total	Notes
Primetime Emmy Awards	11 wins	Across The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and The Late Show
Grammy Awards	2 wins	Comedy and spoken-word albums
Peabody Awards	3 wins	For his work in television satire and late night
Time 100	2006 and 2012	Named one of the world's most influential people

FAQs

How old is Stephen Colbert? He is 62. He was born on May 13, 1964, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Charleston, South Carolina.

How tall is Stephen Colbert? He is 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m). He has said so himself. In 2014 he joked about suing Google for listing him at 5 ft 10 in, saying it had robbed him of an inch.

Who is Stephen Colbert's wife? Evelyn McGee, known as Evie. They married in 1993 and have three children. She has worked with him behind the scenes, including producing After Midnight.

Why did The Late Show end? CBS said the decision was purely financial, and the show cost far more to make than it earned in ads. Many commentators suggested his criticism of Donald Trump's second administration played a part. CBS has never said that was a factor.

What is Stephen Colbert's net worth? Published estimates put it at about $75 million. That is an estimate based on his salary, books and deals, not a filed figure.

What happened to Stephen Colbert at Harvard? On November 5, 2026, a fire alarm cut short his talk with Yo-Yo Ma at Sanders Theatre, about forty minutes in. Striking graduate students were picketing outside. The union said the alarm had nothing to do with its protest, and no cause was found.

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