Guy Fieri Says He Spoke to His Late Dad Through a Medium 2 Days After He Died: 'That Helped'

Mar. 15, 2025

Guy Fieri and his dad Jim.Photo:Guy Fieri/Instagram

Guy Fieri/Instagram

Guy Fierihad a spiritual communication with his dad just a couple days after he died.

The Food Network star opened up about speaking with his dad Jim, who died in January at 81 years old, through a medium. During an interview onIn Depth with Graham Bensinger, Fieri got emotional speaking of his grief in the immediate days after.

“It screwed me up… a few days of, ‘I don’t want to talk to anybody. I don’t want to see anybody, just leave me alone,’” he said.

Shortly after, Fieri says his friend, who “ironically enough” is a spiritual medium, felt compelled to reach out to Fieri. He recalls her telling him, “Your dad is blowing me up… Your dad is all over me about you. He just wants you to know he’s…”

“And she starts depicting to me things that nobody in the world [would] know what’s going on. I mean it is goosebump city what I’m telling you,” he explained to host Graham Bensinger.

One of the most extraordinary parts of the medium’s communication is that it happened just two days after Jim’s death.

“So, she goes, ‘And they don’t come to me like this. It’s usually like five or six days.’ This was like day two,” Fieri recounted her saying. “So she said, ‘He’s really hell bent at getting in touch with you.’ So that helped.”

Fieri credits his friend with handling his grief with care. His experience with a medium and the spiritual world also changed his outlook on funeral arrangements.

“She’s not full of s—. I mean, I trust Karen quite a bit. All the things that I said I wouldn’t do: I wasn’t gonna go for the cremation part and take him there. I wasn’t gonna go do that. I was just, ‘I don’t want any part of this.’ Something changed, took a whole different thing… I surprised myself about how I handled it,” he explained.

He added: “And not that I didn’t ball my eyes out, and not that I don’t have my regret, not all that. It was just a different thing.”

Guy Fieri and his family.FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty

“The funny thing is, out of everything that’s happened, it has made me probably 10 times closer to my mom,” he said. “Not that my mom and I have not always been super close, but we’ve been close… in that we’re so similar in personality that there was a little bit of…it’s like when you’re too close to the person that you can almost be little smart asses together.”

His mom, Penny, was married to Jim for over five decades. They also lost their daughter, Morgan – Fieri’s sister – in 2011 after she died from metastatic melanoma.

“But it was just this, like I never had to really talk to my mom about stuff as much as I talked to him about stuff. And so since this has happened, my mom and I have become like uber close,” Fieri said. “I could not be more proud of my mom. I mean what a warrior. 56 years she was married to this guy and then gone."

In June, Fieri shared that he was experiencing his firstFather’s Daywithout his dad, penning a heartfelt tribute on Instagram.

“Hope everyone’s having a great Father’s Day. I’m with Hunter and Ryder and the family right now and bunch of our friends all getting together,” said Guy. “Kind of a tough day for me, first Father' Day without my dad Jim, but even when you’re having a tough day some little miracles happen in the world.”

Guy Fieri’s interview with Graham Bensinger.In Depth with Graham Bensinger

In Depth with Graham Bensinger

In a PEOPLE cover story back in 2022, Fieri opened up about his dad’s pancreatic cancer. At the time, Jim had celebrated his 80th birthday and was five years cancer free.

“He’s been a great advocate for people that have gone through it,” he said. “Because there’s not a lot of knowledge about it. It’s not a great success rate. But I think you got to live every single day. That’s the biggest thing, is you never know what tomorrow’s going to bring.”

“Family is always the first priority,” he added at the time.

source: people.com