Shepard Smith Has Shared His Life With Partner Gio Graziano Since 2012
Updated Oct. 1 2020, 3:35 p.m. ET
After nearly three decades working as a newscaster, Shepard “Shep” Smith is used to being in the public eye. He spent 23 years appearing on hundreds of thousands of television screens every weeknight or afternoon while working for Fox News Channel. Although he abruptly announced he’d be leaving the network in 2019, Shep is still very much a household name.
As with many public figures, people have always been very curious about Shep’s personal life. For his part, Shep appears to want to keep his private life private, but he has spoken a bit about his partner. Here’s what we know.
Giovanni “Gio” Graziano has been Shep Smith’s partner since 2012.
In a 2018 interview with TIME Magazine, Shep said he grew up with the following values: “You don’t talk about your money, you don’t talk about your politics, and you don’t talk about your sex. Right now, everyone wants to talk about those things, and I’m not one of them. Not going to do it.”
Of course, that didn’t stop people from asking him to talk about each of those things. In that same interview, he briefly mentioned Gio, his long-term boyfriend, saying: “I don’t mind talking about it. It’s just, you know, that’s just my personal life. And I’m not hiding anything.”
“I have a longtime boyfriend and we’re as happy as we can be and we live a very normal life and go to dinner and go to games and see his family and see my family. It’s great for us. But I can’t imagine anyone else finding it interesting.”
Speaking to the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism in 2017, Shep was similarly frank about keeping his private life private, saying: “I don’t think about it. It’s not a thing. I go to work. I manage a lot of people. I cover the news. I deal with holy hell around me. I go home to the man I’m in love with.”
While his relationship with Gio is clearly a huge and important part of his life, Shepard has a lot on his plate and isn’t much interested in sharing a lot of personal details about his non-work life. We totally get that! We’re just happy he’s happy.
Shep Smith has made a surprising return to television.
We have good news for anyone who has been missing Shepard’s broadcasts (as long as you’re not tied to only watching him on Fox). Almost one full year after his abrupt departure from the Fox News Channel, Shepard has now officially joined CNBC. He will be making a general interest nightly newscast called, simply, The News with Shepard Smith. The show airs weeknights at 7 p.m., putting him back in the familiar time slot he used to inhabit at Fox before they moved him to afternoons seven years ago.
Shepard says he’s excited about the fresh start provided to him by moving to CNBC. “We’re going to come out and do just the news,” he said. “We’re not planning to do any analysis in our news hour. We’re going to have journalists, reporters, sound, and video. We’re going to have newsmakers and experts ... but no pundits. We’re going to leave the opinion to others. It’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to do. It’s what I’ve been working at for 30 years.”
Although Shep has been passionate about doing “just the news” for years, it’ll definitely be an adjustment for both him and CNBC as they work together to build the new show from the ground up. “It’s not an easy thing to start from scratch,” he said. “There’s no muscle memory at CNBC in terms of doing a general newscast. We’re creating all of that. And that’s fun. It was fun creating in 1996, and it’s fun creating in 2020.”