ABC Anchor Returns to TV After Husband Dies of Brain Cancer

Chicago-based anchor Diane Pathieu had nothing but gratitude for her supporters as she returned to work at ABC affiliate WLS-TV on Monday, more than two months after her husband died due to brain cancer.

The traffic anchor’s husband, Nicholas Adamski, died in hospice at the age of 42 on May 27, according to the network, nearly five years after being diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma in 2020.

Life without her husband by her side has been “weird,” an emotional Pathieu told her WLS-TV colleagues and audience Monday.

“Look, it’s a process. You guys have all said that to me. Thank you all, each and every one of you,” Pathieu told her co-anchors. “When I tell you, you know who your friends are when they wrap themselves around you at your darkest time. I’m sitting next to the people who did that.”

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She continued, “So thank you all, not just the people I’m sitting next to, the people behind the scenes, Hope, the people upstairs in the newsroom, in the control room, every single one of you made a difference in my life, a positive difference in my life at my darkest time, at my lowest time. I will never forget that. So thank you.”

Pathieu also expressed her gratitude to all of the viewers who had sent her love. “Almost every single one of them … shared a story of similarity,” she said, “and it’s amazing to me how many of us are going through something and how so many of us forget that about one another. Right? Like I just wish we would remember that everybody is going through something.”

After Adamski’s death, he was remembered for his life of “service, strength and a deep compassion for others” by WLS-TV, which reported at the time that the Milwaukee Fire Department member had been awarded the Medal of Valor for saving an infant from a fire.