‘Today’ Show Anchor Dylan Dreyer Shares Nightmare Airport Experience

Dylan Dreyer is calling on airports to “do better.” The Today co-host and NBC News meteorologist, 43, recently opened up about her family’s troublesome airport experience after they discovered that an airport restaurant’s “gluten-free” menu options weren’t actually gluten-free, something that poses a health risk for her son Calvin, who has celiac disease.

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“DEAR AIRPORT RESTAURANTS: do not get our hopes up by listing a gluten free pizza crust,” Dreyer began the impassioned Feb. 21 Instagram post, which was shared alongside a photo of the restaurant’s menu listing “gluten free crust” as a substitute. “We literally walked out of our way to sit down to a nice meal before a long flight.”

Dryer went on to point out that “if you cook the gluten free pizza in a rolling pizza oven with every other regular pizza, it is no longer a gluten free pizza,” before concluding the post, “Save yourself the energy of even stocking a gluten free crust. Also, airports: do better for people with celiac disease.”

While the issue may be one overlooked by many restaurant goers, it’s one that is near and dear to Dryer’s heart. The Today show star revealed in May 2023 that her son Calvin, whom she shares with husband Brian Fichera, was diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease in which consumption of gluten leads to damage in the small intestine, per the Celiac Disease Foundation. Dryer said live on Today that her son, then 6, was diagnosed after experiencing frequent stomach pain for about a year.

“There was one time the pain was so bad that we thought maybe he had something like his appendix burst,” she recalled. “He was hunched over in pain.”

After rushing Calvin to the emergency room, and following various doctors’ appointments and tests, “the bloodwork came back with the results of him having celiac disease. I knew nothing about celiac disease. I knew a friend of a friend had it, and she couldn’t eat bread. That’s basically the knowledge I had.”

Following his diagnosis, Dryer and her family switched to a gluten-free diet, the Today co-host sharing that “not only is it not feeding him any wheat products but it’s also the cross-contamination risk. All of my stuff in the kitchen had to be thrown out, all of our wooden spoons, wooden cutting boards, anything that had a scratch in it … any rivets on the inside of the pot where the handle is. All of that had to be thrown out because gluten can hide everywhere.”

The cross-contamination risk is one that Dryer now has to look out for when outside of the home, leading to her impassioned airport PSA earlier this month. Responding to the post, many reacted with support, one person writing, “Just because it starts gluten-free doesn’t mean it ends gluten-free if they don’t keep it separate! We just have to keep educating (but it’s exhausting).”