CBS host Tony Dokoupil got a vasectomy—and he wants other men to think about the procedure, too.
On Sunday night, the CBS Mornings co-anchor took to Instagram to reveal he went under the knife last Friday, sharing photos from a hospital room and a post-procedure video recorded by his wife, the author and MSNBC anchor Katy Tur.
In the footage, Dokoupil can be seen walking stiffly behind a grinning Tur. “You’re not supposed to be this mobile,” he remarks. “It’s a perfectly good procedure, but it’s just—feeling a little off.” The 41-year-old pauses for a moment, then adds: “I’m wearing a diaper, what do you want?”
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In the accompanying caption, Dokoupil explained that he’d begun thinking about the procedure after Tur, to whom he’s been married since 2017, “got me thinking about the ways she’s had to carry the weight of prevention all our years together.”
Tur, who shares two young children with Dokoupil, also “kindly reminded me of all the side effects attached to the available methods, side effects I as a man hadn’t ever really considered, because I never experienced them,” he added. Also factored into the discussion, according to the CBS journalist, was “the major worry of another pregnancy and what that might mean for her health and her body after two difficult deliveries.”
Tur, 39, has been open about the unplanned C-section that she went through to give birth to the couple’s first child, Teddy, back in 2019. Exhausted from the procedure, unable to sit up on her own, and struggling to breastfeed, Tur entered a difficult postpartum period, at one point hallucinating that her mother-in-law was hiding under the bed.
“I told the nurses, thinking that they'd understand, maybe even chuckle, and instead they sent a full psychiatric team to evaluate me,” she told NBC’s Today at the time. Tur recalled being “terrified” to leave the hospital and be alone with her new baby, and relied heavily on Dokoupil, who readily stepped up.
“That first month, while I was still recovering from major surgery, exhausted and in pain, adjusting to my new self, Tony was there, changing diapers, bringing me food, letting me nap,” she said. “Then he was back at work and it was all me. And yes, I figured it out.” (A vocal advocate for paid parental leave, Tur called the lack of coverage in the United States “shameful” in her first on-air appearance after her maternity leave.)
In May 2021, Tur delivered the family’s second child, Eloise, also via C-section. “With Eloise, I had a better birth experience,” she told pregnancy blog Babe by Hatch last year. “I recovered much faster. I had a great surgeon who sewed me up really nicely. And I found the recovery was just a world better than the first experience.”
Dokoupil, a former senior writer at The Daily Beast and Newsweek, said on Instagram that he “delayed” and “argued” and “delayed some more,” but eventually decided to go through with the procedure after reading up on the subject and discussing it with friends who’d already undergone it.
“And you know what? It WAS easy. It WAS fine,” he wrote, adding that he wanted his post to be a “mini PSA for guys who are where I was a year ago.”
“Just suggesting that maybe you talk to your wife or girlfriend about how you can take the burden off her,” he wrote. “Everyone will be better for it.”
Dokoupil, who was a correspondent for MSNBC and CBS before moving to an anchor position, has two other children from a previous marriage.
