- Date Of Birth: January 12, 1951
- Date Of Death: February 17, 2021
- Spouse: Roxy Maxine McNeely (m. 1977; div. 1980) Michelle Sixta (m. 1983; div. 1990) Marta Fitzgerald (m. 1994; div. 2004) Kathryn Rogers (m. 2010)
- Occupation: Radio host and political commentator
- City: Palm Beach
- State: Florida
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (/ˈlɪmbɔː/ LIM-baw; January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021) was an American radio personality, conservative political commentator, author, and television show host. He was best known as the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, which was nationally syndicated on AM and FM radio stations.
Limbaugh became one of the premier conservative voices in the United States during the 1990s and hosted a national television show from 1992 to 1996. He was among the most highly compensated figures in American radio history; in 2018 Forbes listed his earnings at $84.5 million. In December 2019, Talkers Magazine estimated that Limbaugh’s show attracted a cumulative weekly audience of 15.5 million listeners to become the most-listened-to radio show in the United States. Limbaugh also wrote seven books; his first two, The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993), made The New York Times Best Seller list.
Limbaugh garnered controversy from his statements on race, LGBT matters, feminism, sexual consent, and climate change. Despite being a polarizing figure, he was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. During the 2020 State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Limbaugh described himself as being “100 percent, totally deaf”. In 2001, he announced that he had lost most of his ability to hear: “I cannot hear television. I cannot hear music. I am, for all practical purposes, deaf – and it’s happened in three months.” He said that the condition was not genetic. On December 19, 2001, doctors at the House Ear Clinic in Los Angeles were able to successfully restore a measure of his hearing through cochlear implant surgery. Limbaugh received a Clarion CII Bionic Ear.
When questioned whether Limbaugh’s sudden hearing loss was caused by his addiction to opioids, his cochlear implant doctor, otolaryngologist Jennifer Derebery, said that it was possible, but that there is no way to know for sure without performing tests that would destroy Limbaugh’s hearing completely. “We don’t know why some people, but apparently not most, who take large doses may lose their hearing”.
In 2005, Limbaugh was forced to undergo “tuning” due to an “eye twitch”, an apparent side-effect of cochlear implants.
On December 30, 2009, while vacationing in Honolulu, Hawaii, Limbaugh was admitted to Queen’s Medical Center with intense chest pains. His doctors attributed the pain to angina pectoris.
On April 8, 2014, on his radio program, Limbaugh announced his decision to ‘go bilateral’. “I’m going to get an implant on the right side”, he said. After bilateral tuning, there was a 100% improvement. “Coming from total deafness, it is miraculous! How can you not believe in God?”, Limbaugh said in his national daily broadcast.
Limbaugh, a cigar and former cigarette smoker, was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer on January 20, 2020, after first experiencing shortness of breath on January 12. He had previously downplayed the link between smoking and cancer deaths, arguing that it “takes 50 years to kill people, if it does.” He announced his diagnosis during his radio show on February 3. He advised he would miss airtime to undergo treatment, and that he would try to continue the program “as normally and competently” as he could. On October 20, 2020, Limbaugh announced that treatment had been ineffectual at containing the cancer, that his diagnosis was terminal, and that he had been given a time frame on when he should expect to die. In his final broadcast of 2020, he said “I wasn’t expected to make it to October, and then to November, and then to December. And yet, here I am, and today, got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today.”
Limbaugh died on February 17, 2021, at the age of 70. According to his wife, Kathryn Rogers Limbaugh, his death was attributed to complications of his lung cancer. Governor Ron DeSantis directed flags in the state of Florida be lowered to half-staff on the date of his interment. Limbaugh was interred at the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. – Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.
