Shepard Smith

Personal Life

Shepard was once arrested in Florida on a charge of having aggravated battery, but was later released and case was dismissed.

Smith appeared in a Hollywood film called "VOLCANO", as himself. In addition, clips of him anchoring the opening of Fox News Channel on Iraq War in 2003 was used in a movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11.

There was a famous video circulating YouTube where Shepard has a Freudian slip and puts the words Jennifer Lopez and blow job in the same sentence. That slip of the tongue occurred while referring to the artist's new song at the time 'Jenny From the Block'. He said: "J. Lo's new song 'Jenny From the Block', all about Lopez' roots. About how she's still a neighborhood gal at heart. But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section, sound more likely to give her a curb job than a blow job. Or, uh. A block party. Sorry about that slip-up there.”

Love And Relationships

Shepard married one of his classmates from his time at the University of Mississippi. He got married to Virginia Donald, in 1987. They had no children and separated in 1993. Soon after the separation Shepard was reportedly dating Patty Frees, from New York. According to reports they were even engaged and were planning to get married.

Like every famous personality, Shepard is the subject of many rumors and gossip. Many people in the media speculated that the reason for Smith’s divorce was the fact that, despite being married to a woman, he was actually a closet homosexual. According to Gawker, Smith had been dating Giovanni Graziano, better known by the nickname Gio, a graduate of Penn State and a former producer at Fox Business. The relationship was kept from the higher-ups at Fox since Smith’s bosses were not exactly known for their gay-friendly attitudes. It was speculated that they did not want to deal with backlash of having a gay news anchor.

What raised people's curiosity, was whether Smith's revelation and Roger Ailes retirement were connected on the grounds that Shepard confession came shortly after Roger Ailes stopped running Fox News. Shepard assured everyone that Roger did not force him to remain in the closet. “That’s not true,” he told The Huffington Post in an interview when asked about the reports. “He was as nice as he could be to me. I loved him like a father.” On the same interview, he was also asked whether he had heard any of homophobic slurs that Roger used directly. To that he answered: "No, never. He treated me with respect, just respect. I wasn’t new in the business when I came here ? I’d been doing reporting for 12 years? But I wasn’t old in it either, and he gave me every opportunity in the world and he never asked anything of me but that we get it right, try to get it right every day. It was a very warm and loving and comfortable place."