Katie Couric has revealed that she was diagnosed with temporary memory loss.
The 69-year-old journalist detailed the “freaky” health scare in a candid Substack post on July 6, titled “The Day I’ll Never Remember.”
“It was Saturday, June 27, 2026. But when I was asked the month, the year, and who was president, I got them wrong. I wasn’t sure of the month. I thought it was 2024. And I believed Joe Biden was president. Let me explain,” she wrote.
Couric’s mysterious memory gap occurred at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The former CBS Evening News anchor said she participated in two panels during her trip but has no recollection of either and “no idea” what was discussed. Her memories were erased for about seven hours, she said, and “will stay in a big, black hole.”
“I decided to wear a white linen suit, a navy and white knit sleeveless shirt, and my new hat. John drove with me to the campus of the Aspen Institute and was excited to go to the hot dog stand for lunch. (They’re really good hot dogs!) That’s the last thing I remember,” she wrote.
Her husband, John Molner, a financier she has been married to for 12 years, contributed to the post, saying Couric “appeared weak and dizzy” after the panels concluded. “She knew who I was and could answer a few other basic questions,” Molner wrote, but added, “Katie was definitely not all there.”
Couric was taken to a hospital in Aspen, where she answered questions. She believed it was July 2024, that Joe Biden was president, and she could not recall having a three-week-old granddaughter.
“Over the course of the next several hours, she asked me a version of those questions dozens of times. I’d answer, and a few minutes later (sometimes sooner), she’d ask the same question!” her husband recalled. “She reintroduced herself to the nurses every time they came into the room.”
“I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day as she repeatedly asked me the same questions: ‘What was I doing before we got to the hospital?’ ‘Why am I at the hospital?’” he added.
While doctors initially believed Couric had a stroke, she was later diagnosed with transient global amnesia or temporary memory loss.
According to The New England Journal of Medicine, which the veteran journalist cited in her Substack post, a case of transient global amnesia is “characterized by a sudden, complete inability to retain new information, lasting for several hours, in a middle-aged or older person, with preservation of alert and all other cognitive functions.” A person experiencing transient global amnesia is unable to create new memories.
Couric’s doctor told her she had “lost [her] short-term memory,” but reassured her, “It will return tomorrow. You are safe!”
The TV anchor told her followers that she still doesn’t know why it happened. “The cause seems to be as mysterious as the brain itself,” she wrote. “Someone described it as my brain failing to hit the record button.”
On Instagram, she said she was sharing her story “in hopes it helps others going through something similar.”
“While this was a freaky occurrence, it could have been much more serious,” she said.
“So ultimately, I’m relieved—even though several hours of a Saturday in June will always be missing for me.”
