Sean Hannity

Overview

Sean Hannity is a conservative broadcaster whose radio program, The Sean Hannity Show, and television program, Hannity, have made him one of the most recognizable figures in American conservative media for nearly three decades (TV Guide). He joined Fox News at its founding in 1996, built a nationally syndicated radio audience, and became an unusually close confidant of Donald Trump during the first Trump presidency (WEKU). His public record since includes a sworn admission that he did not believe the 2020 election-fraud claims his platform amplified, a reported multimillion-dollar property empire, and a high-profile personal reinvention in Florida (WUGA).

The deposition and the property empire

Hannity’s most legally consequential moment came under oath. In a deposition taken in August 2022 and surfaced at a Delaware Superior Court hearing that December, he testified about the 2020 presidential election: “I did not believe it for one second” (WUGA). The testimony came in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News, and it landed in sharp contrast with his on-air record: on November 30, 2020, Hannity had hosted Sidney Powell, one of the most prominent promoters of fraud claims, on his show (WUGA).

A few years earlier, a different investigation had examined his finances. In April 2018, The Guardian reported that public records linked Hannity to a network of shell companies that had purchased more than 870 homes across seven states for upwards of $90 million — some with mortgages backed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Fast Company). His lawyer did not dispute that the properties were his, while Hannity dismissed the reporting as a “fake news attack” (Fast Company).

A near-daily line to the White House

During Trump’s first term, Hannity’s relationship with the president went well beyond interviewing him. Jane Mayer’s 2019 New Yorker reporting, discussed in a March 2019 Fresh Air interview, described Hannity as part of a Fox News “shadow cabinet” around Trump: the two men spoke “almost daily,” and Hannity had conducted roughly 44 interviews with Trump — compared with 10 combined interviews across all other television networks (WEKU). Mayer’s framing was that Fox hosts functioned less as journalists covering the White House than as an informal advisory circle shaping it (WEKU).

From Santa Barbara odd jobs to Fox News

Hannity was born Sean Patrick Hannity in New York City on December 30, 1961, the son of Hugh J. and Lillian F. Hannity, and raised in Franklin Square, Long Island, in a family of Irish ancestry (The Sean Hannity Show (archived)). Before broadcasting, he worked construction jobs and tended bar in Santa Barbara, California, in the late 1980s (The Sean Hannity Show (archived)). He graduated from St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale in 1980 and dropped out of several colleges, including New York University, before committing to radio; Liberty University later gave him an honorary degree in 2005 (The Sean Hannity Show (archived)).

His radio career began in 1989 as a volunteer host at KCSB-FM, UC Santa Barbara’s college station (The Sean Hannity Show (archived); TV Guide). He then moved to WVNN in Athens, Alabama, and in 1992 succeeded Neal Boortz at WGST in Atlanta (The Sean Hannity Show (archived)). His break came in September 1996, when Fox News founder Roger Ailes hired him to co-host Hannity & Colmes opposite liberal commentator Alan Colmes (The Sean Hannity Show (archived)). Along the way he filled in for Rush Limbaugh on WABC in New York and carried a nationally syndicated show on the station’s flagship (TV Guide). Today The Sean Hannity Show airs weekdays from 3 to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com (iHeart).

Books, awards, and charity work

Hannity has authored three books that appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list, two of them reaching No. 1 (TV Guide). He has twice received the Marconi Award for Nationally Syndicated Radio Host of the Year (TV Guide). In 2003 he created the Freedom Concerts project to raise money and awareness for the Freedom Alliance, which provides scholarships to the children of slain U.S. military personnel (TV Guide).

Two interviews with Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Hannity has interviewed Sarah Huckabee Sanders — the White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019 — on his program at least twice. In an October 2017 episode titled “The Defender,” the show’s own description bills it as “Sean’s interview with White House Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders who has been on the front lines of pushing through the Trump agenda with the White House Press Corps,” promising behind-the-scenes stories of her life in politics (Omny). On September 7, 2020, she returned for a 90-minute episode built around her book Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House (iHeart).

Marriage, the Florida move, and the engagement

Hannity married former journalist Jill Rhodes in 1993, and the couple had two children, Merri Kelly and Sean Patrick (USA Today). On June 3, 2020, they confirmed in a joint statement to USA Today that they had divorced — quietly, more than a year earlier — saying they were “committed to working together for the best interests of their children” and asking that their privacy be respected (USA Today).

In January 2025, Hannity announced on his iHeart radio show that he was leaving New York for good and moving permanently to Florida: “I am out. I am done. I’m finished” (Realtor.com). He cited policy differences with New York’s leaders and praised Florida’s lack of a state income tax (Realtor.com). The move followed the sale of his waterfront estate on Centre Island, New York — purchased in 2008 for $8.5 million, listed in May 2024 for $13.75 million, and sold for $12.7 million in cash (Realtor.com). In Florida he owns a $23.5 million Manalapan mansion (bought at the end of 2024) and two adjacent Palm Beach townhouses, purchased for $5.3 million in 2021 and $14.9 million in January 2025; he listed the Manalapan mansion for rent in June 2025 at $130,000 a month (Realtor.com).

In December 2024, Hannity and fellow Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt revealed they were engaged, a little over four years after their first date; he proposed on bended knee inside their Palm Beach church a few days before Christmas (Realtor.com). Trump himself praised the relationship during an August 19 Fox & Friends interview, joking that Hannity “might take a very lovely young lady that he knows very, very well to dinner” in Washington, D.C. (Realtor.com). The couple keeps an unconventional arrangement: Hannity works from Palm Beach while Earhardt, 48, stays in New York for Fox & Friends, flying down with her 9-year-old daughter Hayden every Friday and returning Sunday — and the two plan to sign a prenup (Realtor.com).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state the year Hannity & Colmes became the solo Hannity — that could not be verified from the sources read. It does not present TV Guide’s 13.5-million-weekly-listener figure as current, since the page carries no date. It does not assert net worth or annual income figures, which had no independent verification. The property figures (870+ homes, $90 million) are reported as The Guardian’s findings and Hannity’s “fake news attack” dismissal as his response — neither is treated as settled fact. His sworn Dominion testimony is reported as what he said under oath, not as an independent adjudication of the fraud claims. Finally, it does not claim a Radio Hall of Fame induction or a fourth bestselling book; both appear only on sources this profile does not cite.