Katie Couric’s 2 Daughters: All About Ellie and Carrie

Katie Couric’s daughters have followed in her footsteps.

While neither Elinor (Ellie) nor Caroline (Carrie) Monahan has gone into broadcasting, both work behind the camera — Ellie is a TV writer and Carrie is a producer. Couric had her two children during her first marriage to the late Jay Monahan, who died of colon cancer in 1998 at age 42.

Ellie arrived first, in 1991, and Carrie followed five years later, in 1996. Couric remarried in 2014 to John Molner.

When asked what she was most proud of during an event in 2012, the Stand Up to Cancer co-founder cited her children.

“Probably the fact that I think I did a pretty good job of raising my kids,” Couric answered. “My daughters are, first and foremost, incredibly nice girls with good values.”

Couric has also opened up about how she raised her daughters to understand the responsibility and drawbacks of having a famous parent.

“I always would tell them, ‘Listen, if you rob a 7-11, you get in a lot of trouble or do something you’re not supposed to do, it’s different for you than it is for the average kid. You’re gonna be on the cover of National Enquirer,’ ” Couric told AOL in 2019. “It was a really good way for them to stay in line.”

In October 2021, Couric released a memoir called Going There, which she told PEOPLE she wrote as “a gift” to her daughters to “impart some wisdom from the experience I’ve gained.”

Some of this wisdom included Couric’s parenting choices around body image. In March 2021, the former Today host went makeup-free for PEOPLE’s annual Beautiful Issue, where she shared how she taught Ellie and Carrie to have self-worth.

“I always had to stop myself from saying to my daughters when they were little, ‘Oh, you look so pretty.’ If I caught myself saying that I’d add, ‘And you’re so smart,’ ” she told PEOPLE. “I haven’t been perfect and I don’t think I’ve always been great about that, but I tried to balance that focus.”

Here is everything to know about Katie Couric’s two children.

Ellie Monahan, 33

Couric’s elder daughter, Elinor Tully Monahan, was born in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 1991. Ellie graduated from Yale University and now lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a screenwriter, with credits on TV shows including Mr. Robot and The Boys.

In 2012, during her senior year of college, Ellie penned a Father’s Day article for the Huffington Post in honor of her late father, in which she noted, “his absence has become the norm in our household, all my sister and I have ever really known.”

She continued, “Though we suffered that devastating loss at a young age (I was six, my sister only two), we have also been very fortunate to have been brought up by a strong, supportive and loving mother whose friends and coworkers … have and continue to serve as positive role models.”

Couric has described Ellie as “a private person.” The journalist told AOL in 2019, “She’s [Ellie’s] actually pretty low-key. When she was 16 and I did an interview with a magazine, I told a story about her and she said, ‘Mom, I’d really prefer that you not talk about me in public, and if you do, can you just ask me first?’ I was like, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ ”

Ellie met her now-husband, Mark Dobrosky, at Yale. The two got engaged on a weekend trip in Ojai, California, in February 2019. Mark proposed with the ring Ellie’s late father gave to Couric and they got married on July 4, 2021, at Cedar Lakes Estate in Port Jervis, New York.

To celebrate, Couric shared several photos on Instagram of her daughter growing up alongside a sweet written tribute.

​​”It seems like yesterday when Ellie was crawling up my body like a little gymnast and doing a back flip off my shoulders,” Couric wrote. “When she wouldn’t take off her Belle dress — ever … When she headed off to college where she met a wonderful guy named Mark. When she moved to LA for graduate school … and became a successful TV writer.”

The veteran journalist also referenced Ellie’s late father in the caption, writing, “Jay would be so proud. Here’s to love, here’s to joy, here’s to the future.”

In her June 2022 Q&A video, Couric gave fans an update on Ellie’s life. The proud mom shared that her older daughter was “enjoying being married,” including buying a house and getting a dog.

Ellie also hosts a podcast with her sister called All Each Other Has, where they cover a wide range of topics, including “sleepaway camp in the American imagination” (both sisters went to summer camp as kids) and “fame by proxy.”

In August 2023, Couric went to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour with her two daughters. Months later, in December, the mom-of-two revealed she got some pretty exciting news from Ellie right before the concert. In a video shared to her Instagram account, Couric was seen accepting a friendship bracelet, which read “Granny to be.” As she reacted to the surprise, Ellie confirmed to Couric that she was pregnant.

“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!’ ” Couric wrote in the caption, adding that she had been “dying to tell” her followers about Ellie’s pregnancy.

Ellie and Dobrosky welcomed a baby boy, John Albert, on March 23, 2024. “He will be called Jay in honor of his maternal grandfather,” Couric shared on Instagram.

Carrie Monahan, 29

Couric and Jay welcomed Caroline Monahan, who goes by Carrie, in New York City on Jan. 5, 1996.

Carrie graduated from Stanford University with honors in 2018, earning her bachelor’s degree in American studies and French. She received her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Carrie worked as a fact check producer for Reuters and started working as an associate producer at RadicalMedia in October 2023.

Carrie is close with her older sister — beyond their podcast, she also served as Ellie’s maid of honor and sang several songs at her sister’s wedding. When Carrie performed Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird” during the service, Ellie told PEOPLE she both “laughed and cried.” During the reception, Carrie sang another song, Kacey Musgraves’ “Late to the Party.”

“It was so moving and beautiful!” Ellie said. “We were so lucky to have our musically inclined family and guests perform.”

The producer has also been supportive of her famous mom. In 2021, Couric appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and shared a story from her time as the first solo female anchor of CBS Evening News. Couric told Colbert that one night, she started crying at the dinner table and told her girls she was “having a really hard time.”

Carrie, who was about 10 at the time, tried to comfort her mother and quoted Kim Cattrall’s Sex and the City character. “Carrie said, ‘Mom, remember what Samantha says … If I listened to what every b—- in New York said about me, I’d never leave the house,’ ” Couric recalled with a laugh.

Carrie lives in Brooklyn, where Couric told fans in her June 2022 Q&A that “she is really kind of tapping into her creativity. And she’s so smart. I’m so proud of her.”