Personal Life
Imus was born in Riverside, California, the son of Frances E. (née Moore) and John Donald Imus, Sr., older brother of Fred Imus. He was raised on a sprawling cattle ranch called The Willows near Kingman, Arizona. He served in the Marine Corps as a bugler from 1957 to 1960.
Imus battled alcoholism during his early career in New York, but in 1987 finally pursued effective treatment. (As of 2008, he has remained sober for 20 years). In 1988, with his cocaine and alcohol addictions now legendary in show business, Imus reshaped his show from strictly comedy into a forum for political issues, charitable causes and news-based parodies.
In 1979, he divorced his first wife, Harriet. He married his second wife, Deirdre Coleman on December 17, 1994. He has two stepdaughters that he adopted from his first marriage (Nadine and Tony), two daughters from that marriage (Ashly and Elizabeth), three grandchildren (two from Elizabeth and one from Ashley), and one son, Frederick Wyatt (nicknamed Wyatt, born July 3, 1998), from his current marriage. Both Don and Deirdre Imus are vegetarians.
In 1999, Imus and his wife founded the Imus Ranch, a working 4,000-acre (16 km2) cattle ranch near Ribera, New Mexico, 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Santa Fe, for children with cancer, as well as siblings of SIDS victims. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day each year, the Imus family volunteers their time at the Imus ranch. Imus continues his broadcasts from a studio there, while the rest of his cast broadcast from New York. In 2000, Imus suffered serious injuries after a fall from a horse at his ranch, and broadcast several shows from a hospital.
Imus maintains three residences; an apartment in Manhattan, a waterfront mansion valued at $13.5 million, in Westport, Connecticut, and the Imus Ranch in Ribera, New Mexico.
On March 16, 2009, Imus announced on his radio show that he had been diagnosed with stage two prostate cancer.
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