John Tesh Shares Lessons Learned Fighting Cancer

Musician recommends visualization techniques, exercise, a patient advocate

Gayle Jo Carter,

AARP

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Published July 19, 2024

John Tesh against orange ombre background

AARP (Connie Sellecca)

Nine years ago, John Tesh, now 72, received devastating news: He was diagnosed with a rare form of prostate cancer and given 18 months to live. He persevered through treatment to beat the odds, but in 2020 the battle was back on — scans showed cancerous tumors in his pelvis and wrapped around internal organs. Today, after a second round of cancer treatment, the musician and former Entertainment Tonight cohost is feeling strong and keeping busy performing at concerts, hosting a syndicated radio show and teaching others to create their own music through his online piano lessons. In our interview, Tesh shares the lessons he’s learned fighting cancer, the secret to his long marriage to actress Connie Sellecca, 69, and how he feels about retiring.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As a cancer survivor, what advice would you give people facing a diagnosis?

In the Bible, Romans 12: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” — that’s a big part of it for me. [Also] having an advocate — my wife was great at this. Connie always stood between me and the doctors. There’s days of depression, with cancer or any disease. You wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning — it’s a big time for somebody going through this kind of stuff — because you get to sleep, and then you wake up [in the middle of the night] and there’s the rumination. One of the things that I learned was I needed to replace the rumination that I had with other things. It’s not something that comes naturally, because the brain really wants to ruminate.

What did you replace the rumination with?

I first replaced it with a great book that I recommend to everybody: Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. You can read it, you can listen to it, and it was understanding that suffering is a big part of just what happens on this earth, and understanding that you haven’t been singled out.

What did your cancer battle teach you?

I spent a lot of my life as a sports announcer, so I spent a lot of my time with athletes who were at the top of the game. A lot of those people, especially if you use downhill skiers as the example, are at the same level physically. But then you’ve always heard the trope that it’s the mental difference. In 1982, I was right by the start house at the world’s longest World Cup downhill, which is [in] Wengen, Switzerland. It’s like 2.8 miles. It’s a long time to be going 65 miles per hour. I’m up there the day before and Franz Klammer, the legendary Austrian ski racer — he didn’t speak any English — he’s up there and he’s in the start house. Everybody’s going on five or six runs just to memorize the course. Klammer had just done one run and he’s in the back, leaning up against the start house, and his coach is next to him. He’s got his helmet on, he’s got his goggles on, he has his poles in his hand and his skis on, he’s got his eyes closed. And he would lean way down, and then his poles would come back, and he would lean way forward, and you see the tips of his skis move while he was standing there. I asked the coach, who spoke English, “What’s going on?” He said, “Well, he’s going through the course in his mind…. He’s memorized the entire course, and he can see himself at the finish line, on the medal stand — not on the bronze or the silver, but on the gold medal stand.” Sure enough, he won that particular race. But years later, while I’m sitting in a chemo chair at MD Anderson [Cancer Center], it occurred to me that I needed to see myself well. I needed to see myself as my Aunt Imogene, 98 years old. I needed to be able to visualize that. I still use that.

Have you changed your diet and exercise plan to keep healthy as you’ve aged?

Connie cooks a lot and we eat a Mediterranean diet. Connie and my [step]son [Gib Gerard, 42] both are big intermittent fasters. I did that for a while. A lot of people go through terrible depression [from cancer treatment], and I still see this great doctor who was like, “You need to stay ahead of it, John. The people I see that fail, who just descend into hell, are the ones that don’t have purpose, and also that they don’t exercise a lot.” That scared me enough where I’m in the gym every day.

You and Connie have been married for 32 years. What’s your secret?

Like a lot of couples, we’ve been through therapy. We argue about stuff, but when we do argue, we never make it an existential threat. We never use the “D” word [divorce].

Do you spend a lot of time with your family?

We have three grandkids — right now they are 12 and 10 and 7 — [during COVID] they spent a lot of time here [at our house]. We spend a lot of family time anyway because my wife and I, we are literally together 24-7. We work together on our radio show [Intelligence For Your Life]. She does a health radio show and podcast [Intelligence For Your Health], and then our son [Gib] — the father of the three kids — he’s here working [at Tesh’s home studio] on video [projects].

Why did you decide to offer online piano lessons?

My concerts are the same audience as our radio show. It’s men and women 55-plus with a huge bump at [age] 65. When you look out, it’s a sea of baby boomers and, without fail, at the end of the show, at least 10 or 15 people — the band and I are always at the end of the stage talking to people — are like, “Oh my gosh, I wish I hadn’t given up my piano lessons. Is it too late to start?” And what people really are resonating with lately is: “How do I protect my brain?” And so while I was doing the piano course, I’m coming across all of these stories [about] how the motor and the visual and the auditory cortexes — cortices of the brain — they all are worked out just like a physical workout, and how piano practice strengthens all these areas. [So] learning a [musical] instrument — I realized I needed to provide an easy way [for others] to do that.

After battling cancer twice, Tesh is back to doing what he loves, including live musical performances.

Connie Sellecca

You’ve interviewed a lot of celebrities over the years. Do any stand out?

Many. It’s people that you might not imagine. Remember Telly Savalas who was on Kojak? I did a two-hour interview with him, and he was — he’s always come off as this tough guy — such a gentle, gentle soul. He spoke to me about suffering and about what he had been through in his life and about losing his mom. Jon Voight, who was a friend, the same thing. And even the old curmudgeon at the time, Bette Davis. She was, as my dad would say, “a crazy old bird,” but a magnificent piece of Hollywood.

What did Bette Davis have to say?

She said, “John, I’m gonna give you a piece of advice. Life is hard. And when you embrace that, then everything just opens up for you.” It must have been a couple of months after that that I read this book called The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, and that was actually his first line [boiled down]. People at a certain level, whether it’s an actor or a figure skater or a writer or a philosopher, there seems to be a sameness in their advice, which is: “Search for what makes you come alive and find purpose.”

What does retirement look like for you?

I don’t have plans. There’s a fair amount of people who un-retire — they retire and then they come back. I have so much fun doing what I’m doing. It is a lily pad life for me, where I can jump from one pad to the other. I love writing; I love writing music; I love teaching now; I love doing the radio show; I love playing piano live; I love hanging out with my grandkids. I may be forced to retire sometime, but I’m enjoying doing this right now, and I feel like I have some purpose.

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Gayle Jo Carter is a former entertainment editor at USA WEEKEND, who during her 30-year reporting and editing career, has worked at USA TODAY, Voice of America and Feature Story News. When not interviewing high-profile people, she’s teaching reformer Pilates classes and doing her best to raise two empathetic, curious, healthy young people to adulthood.

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