Katie Couric, 66, is not afraid to share her makeup-free face! The TODAY alum took to Instagram on December 14 and shared a rare bare-faced selfie to bring awareness to her ongoing eczema issues. “Calling all sensitive skin sufferers! I’ve had eczema ever since I was a little girl, and as I’ve gotten older, it’s started to flare up again,” Katie explained at the start of her caption. In the up-close snapshot, the 66-year-old revealed her swollen eye.
The successful journalist went on to reveal that she also has another skin condition that limits what products she can use. “I also deal with allergic contact dermatitis — safe to say, I have to be careful about what I put on my face,” Katie continued. “My search for treatment led me to @cherylleemdisme. Her products have really helped. I asked Lee a lot of questions about what causes eczema and how to calm flare-ups.”
At the end of her post, the blonde beauty joked about how surprised she was that she allowed her team to share the vulnerable photo. “I can’t believe I let my team post this picture. Good Lord,” Katie joked. After the Going There author shared the selfie with her 1.6 million followers, many of them took to the comments to react. “Maybe no makeup for awhile!” one fan suggested. A separate fan couldn’t help but praise Katie for sharing the makeup-free photo. “I just love that you posted this picture of yourself! You are the bomb diggity [sic] @katiecouric I just love ya! The realest!!!” they penned.
Katie’s post comes just over one year after she revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2022. “Every two minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. On June 21st, I became one of them,” she captioned a photo via Instagram last September. Elsewhere, Katie took to Katie Couric Media to pen an essay about the day she found out. “I felt sick and the room started to spin,” she penned at the time. “I was in the middle of an open office, so I walked to a corner and spoke quietly, my mouth unable to keep up with the questions swirling in my head.”
The proud mother’s experience with cancer also hit close to home, as Katie’s first husband, Jay Monahan, died from colon cancer in 1998. She welcomed her two daughter, Ellie and Carrie, with Jay and later married her current husband, John Molner, 60, in 2014. At the time of her diagnosis, Katie tried to reassure her daughters that she would be OK. “I tried to be as reassuring as Dr. Newman. Their faces froze in disbelief. Then shock. Then they began to cry,” she wrote in her essay. “‘Don’t worry,’ I told Carrie then Ellie, ‘I’m going to be fine,’ trying to convince myself as well as them. They’d already lost one parent. The idea of losing another was unfathomable.”