Steve Harvey

Before the game-show podiums, radio microphones, and crowded stages, Broderick Stephen Harvey was a boy in Welch, West Virginia, born on January 17, 1957, to Jesse Harvey, a coal miner, and Eloise Vera. The youngest of five children, he moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where they lived on East 112th Street. That street would later be renamed Steve Harvey Way in 2015, a fitting marker for someone who had once told a sixth-grade teacher he wanted to be on television when he grew up.

Harvey’s confidence was not always easy-earned. He had a severe stutter as a child, but eventually overcame it. After graduating from Glenville High School in 1974, he attended Kent State University, joined Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and studied advertising, but he did not graduate. He has spoken plainly about “flunking out” after two years and later said that not getting the degree threw his life into a downward spiral. Before comedy took hold, he worked as a boxer, autoworker, insurance salesman, carpet cleaner, and mailman.

His first stand-up performance came on October 8, 1985, at Hilarities Comedy Club in Cleveland. The early years were hard. In the late 1980s, Harvey was homeless for three years, sleeping in his car when he was not performing at shows that provided a hotel, and showering at gas stations and swimming pools. Help from Rich and Becky Liss, including carpet-cleaning work and travel support, kept him moving. In 1990, he became a finalist in the Second Annual Johnnie Walker National Comedy Search, a break that helped lead to a long run as host of It’s Showtime at the Apollo.

Television soon became the place where Harvey’s comic timing and big, direct personality found a national audience. He starred in the ABC series Me and the Boys in 1994, then in The Steve Harvey Show on The WB from 1996 to 2002. In 1997, he joined Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, and Bernie Mac on the Kings of Comedy tour, which became the highest grossing comedy tour in history, and was later brought to film by Spike Lee as The Original Kings of Comedy. Harvey’s last stand-up act took place on August 2, 2012, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, ending a 27-year stand-up career.

Harvey built a second career as one of America’s most visible hosts. Since 2000, he has hosted The Steve Harvey Morning Show. Since September 2010, he has hosted Family Feud, where he holds the longest tenure of any host of the show, as well as Celebrity Family Feud. He has also hosted Family Feud Africa, Judge Steve Harvey, Little Big Shots, Little Big Shots Forever Young, Steve Harvey’s Funderdome, and formerly the Miss Universe competition. His work has brought seven Daytime Emmy Awards, two Marconi Awards, and fourteen NAACP Image Awards.

As an author, Harvey has written four books, including the 2009 bestseller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which spent 64 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and helped inspire the 2012 film Think Like a Man. In 2017, he founded Steve Harvey Global, and he and his wife, Marjorie, founded The Steve and Marjorie Harvey Foundation, focused on youth education. His words still resonate because they sound like they come from lived experience: struggle, work, faith in ambition, and the blunt choice he once put this way, “Either you go after the life you want, or you settle for the life you get.”