Inside Bill Ritter’s Long Journey to Alzheimer’s: How His Wife Knew His Memory Lapses Were More Than Just Aging (Exclusive)

The longtime ABC New York anchor and his wife, Kathleen Friery, open up about the subtle memory changes, months of testing and the moment they finally got an answer

NEED TO KNOW

• Bill Ritter and his wife, Kathleen Friery, share their journey to his early-stage Alzheimer’s diagnosis after years of symptoms
• Ritter stepped back from anchoring at WABC-TV and now focuses on Alzheimer’s advocacy and raising awareness about the disease
• The couple reflects on the challenges of the diagnosis and their determination to face the future with resilience

It began with the smallest of things. A forgotten name, a place that wouldn’t come to mind — the kinds of memory lapses that are easy to dismiss, especially for someone in his mid-70s.

But for Bill Ritter, they felt different.

Over his 25 years behind the anchor desk at WABC-TV Eyewitness News, the veteran journalist had built a career distilling the details of the most complicated stories with clarity and precision. So when those moments became harder to ignore, he and his wife, Kathleen Friery, embarked on a years-long medical journey that ultimately ended with an early-stage Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, Ritter, 76, and Friery, 63, open up about the path that gradually brought them to an answer, starting with those first signs.

“It was weird. In the beginning, it was that feeling of, ‘What’’s their name? It’s on the tip of my tongue,’ “ Ritter recalls. “And I could breeze past it because, who doesn’t have that from time to time? But in the back of my head, I knew something was happening.”

Friery had been noticing it, too. Looking back, she admits she was hesitant to tell her husband of 17 years what she had been seeing.

“I was nervous to say anything,” she recalls. “You don’t want to be the one to bring it up. But when I did, Bill didn’t dismiss my concerns. He said. “Oh, yeah. I’m feeling it.’ ”

Together, they began speaking with doctors in early 2024. But at the time, physicians dismissed Ritter’s problems as mild cognitive impairment, or MCI — a condition that causes a slight decline in memory and thinking skills that doesn’t always progress to dementia.

‘“They said, ‘MCI can sometimes be an on-ramp to Alzheimer’s, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes people have those symptoms and they actually get better,” Friery remembers doctors saying. “So we thought ‘Okay, this is age appropriate. It’s not Alzheimer’s that we’re aware of yet. We’ll just watch it.”

For a while, the couple held onto that hope. Ritter even scaled back his workload, first stepping away from WABC’s 11 p.m. newscast and then, the 5 p.m. one. “I thought getting more sleep would solve everything,” says Ritter.

Even with a lighter schedule, however, Ritter’s memory issues continued.

“I actually started watching him like a hawk,” Friery says. “I wanted to make sure that on camera everything was cool — which it was, no one at work was noticing it. But Bill and I were.”

In fact, one of Ritter’s specialists later told him that even she had watched him on television throughout the evaluation process and never would have guessed anything was wrong. “I guess it’s easy for me, because I write something and then I’m reading it on the screen, or I have it in front of me on my notes,” he says, noting how anchoring remained deeply familiar after decades on the job. “I’m asking the questions. I’m telling the story. So it wasn’t happening there.”

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By the summer of 2025, Ritter and Friery couldn’t ignore what they were seeing at home. So they started the process of speaking with other doctors.

What followed was three to four months of increasingly intensive evaluations, including cognitive testing, brain imaging and eventually, a spinal tap before doctors delivered the diagnosis late last year.

“A couple of people have said to me, ‘So what’s that moment like when you find out?’ Well, it’s not a moment,’ Friery says. “By the time you get the diagnosis, you’ve gone through this long process of countless conversations with doctors. So when we finally heard Alzheimer’s, there was this sense of, ‘Okay, so we’re not crazy. This thing is real.’ ”

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to really be hard on this family,’” says Ritter, who shares 17-year-old daughter Ella with Friery, as well as two adult kids — Mia, 33, and Owen, 31 — with ex-wife Janny Scott. “That’s what really got me. I wondered, ‘What is it going to mean for us and what do we do?’ But within a few minutes, I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got to deal with this.’ ”

That determination has stayed with Ritter as he navigates this next chapter. With no known cure, Ritter was pre-scribed medications (he currently takes a monthly infusion) to slow the progression.

In June, he announced live on air that he’d be stepping away from anchoring WABC’s 6 p.m. broadcast. He’s poured his energy into his longtime advocacy work with the Alzheimer’s Association, and plans to continue telling stories at the network about new research and treatments, and families like his own, who are living with the disease every day.

“I don’t wallow very well,” he laughs.

Some might call that brave, but Ritter insists he rejects that word. “It’s just who I am,” he says. “We all have a mantra at WABC, which is to report the fact wherever they lie, no matter what side of the table you’re on. And that sort of takes over in times like this. ‘What’s the truth?’ And now, we take it from here.”

Watching her husband embrace that attitude and devote himself to his mission of advocacy and awareness has been a source of strength for Friery.

“Honestly, since this all happened, I’ve never been more proud of him,” says the former television producer. “It would be natural for us to focus on loss, and he’s not doing that at all. It’s just not his way. He’s focusing on the next thing, and I’m in awe of how he’s doing it.” 

For more on Bill Ritter, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE — on newsstands Friday.

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