Katie Couric is going to be a grandma — and Taylor Swift was kind of in on the big reveal.
“Been dying to tell you,” Couric, 66, captioned an Instagram video on Sunday, December 17. “This is what happens when you go to a @taylorswift concert last summer and forget your friendship bracelet and your daughters say, ‘Don’t worry, we made one for you!’”
In the clip, Couric’s daughter Caroline “Carrie” Monaghan hands her a beaded bracelet that reads, “Granny 2 Be.” The former TV anchor, visibly confused, looks at her other daughter, Elinor “Ellie” Monahan. “I’m pregnant,” Ellie, 32, told her mom.
“Last August, as we were about to get dressed to go see Taylor Swift at SoFi stadium, my girls surprised me with a very special friendship bracelet they’d made, to deliver some very exciting news,” Couric wrote in a blog on her website, published on Sunday. “After squinting at it for a bit, I finally got it.”
Couric shares daughters Carrie, 27, and Ellie with late husband Jay Monahan, who died of cancer in 1998. Couric re-married husband John Molner in 2014.
“OMG. I’m going to be a grandmother!!!” Couric wrote. “I knew she and Mark were hoping to have a baby soon, but the news was nonetheless surprising.”
Upon hearing the news, Couric admitted she had “mixed feelings” about being a grandmother.
“To be a grandmother means you’ve reached a certain stage of your life,” she explained. “That you would soon be using this emoji 👵🏼, that you really are looking like the actors on the Medicare and Metamucil commercials, that you’re on the ‘back nine,’ as Molner would say. It does seem like yesterday I was holding Ellie in my arms and she was an itty-bitty thing.”
However, her “trepidation was quickly replaced by excitement” as Couric talked to her friends who are already grandmothers.
“For now, I’m marveling at Ellie’s growing stomach. She’s due on March 23, so it won’t be too long! I’m still trying to figure out my grandma name, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be that,” she continued, noting that Granny and “GILFIE (don’t worry, that’s not actually in the running!)” have been thrown around.
Couric’s eldest daughter, Ellie, married Mark Dobrosky in July 2021 at Cedar Lakes Estate in New York.
“We tried to do traditional touches, like cutting the cake and first dance and things like that,” Couric wrote when recapping the ceremony on her website that same month. “But I think a lot of it was very much true to who Ellie is and who Mark is and what they wanted. It was a wonderful reflection of their love and partnership.”
