WASHINGTON, D.C. — When Rachel Campos-Duffy and her husband, Sean Duffy, exchanged wedding vows 27 years ago, they knew they wanted children, but didn’t have a specific number in mind. “We would take whatever God sent our way,” she said.
That turned out to be nine, enough to field a baseball team.
“Don’t tell us we’re crazy. We prefer brave and full of hope for America’s future,” Campos-Duffy wrote announcing a pregnancy on Instagram in 2019.
Raising a family that size is more than a full-time job. But Campos-Duffy is doing it while writing books and co-hosting “Fox & Friends Weekend” with Will Cain and Griff Jenkins, and also tending to the many demands of being a Cabinet spouse. Her husband, Sean Duffy, represented Wisconsin in Congress for 10 years and now serves as transportation secretary under President Donald Trump.
That means, among other things, that Campos-Duffy is never alone in the car with her husband these days; there are always Secret Service agents present, whether the couple is going to church or moving their college-age kids into a dorm. Their lives straddle Washington, D.C., and three states: New Jersey, where they live; New York, where Campos-Duffy works; and Wisconsin, where they retreat to a cabin on a lake during the summer.
With five children still at home, Campos-Duffy, 54, still operates as a full-time mom, insisting that the Fox job is just a few hours a week.
And yet here she is on a Tuesday, strolling through a Capitol Hill park, explaining her schedule and her fear of chickens to a reporter. It’s the week after she attended the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner that a gunman tried to breach. Her latest book comes out in a few weeks.
And no, there’s no Mary Poppins at home running the show.
“We figure it out,” Campos-Duffy told me. “My husband is home on the weekends. I’m home during the week. We have older children who help out if there’s a stretch of time we have to be away.” And her parents, who live in Arizona, are able to stay with the family during especially busy periods.
Forget running on Dunkin’. This is a family that runs on family.
It’s also a family that is steeped in faith and revels in the red, white and blue. (Two of Campos-Duffy’s books have “All American” in the title, and she wrote a children’s book about Lady Freedom, the statue on top of the U.S. Capitol.
In her forthcoming book “All American Patriotism‚ Campos-Duffy reveals the source of this patriotism by sharing her parents’ backstory: how her father’s parents came to Arizona from Mexico and raised 15 children in poverty; how her mother, working as a seamstress in Spain, kept three pictures in a cubicle: Jesus and Mary, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Although they came from different cultures, her parents were America enthusiasts: When the family went on vacation, they visited California’s Great America theme park and the Liberty Bell.
But today, Campos-Duffy believes that America is undergoing an identity crisis brought on, in part, by competing narratives of the nation’s founding, and divisive politics, which has led to a record low in the number of people who say they are proud to be an American.
Can a former reality TV star help spur a renaissance of patriotism? Campos-Duffy is hoping so, and wants you to help.
The faith of Rachel Campos-Duffy
Deeply religious, Campos-Duffy wears a cross around her neck and a custom-made necklace made up of small medallions, each bearing an image of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She was raised a Roman Catholic, as was her husband, and they embrace the church’s teachings on being “open to life,” meaning that God, not the couple, decides on the number of children.
The family prays together before leaving the house in the morning, and before going to bed at night. When Campos-Duffy heard that her friend Charlie Kirk had been shot, she immediately left her home and went to a church to pray. Before entering his confirmation hearing in 2025, Sean Duffy led his family in prayer outside the chamber.
Their wholesome lifestyle (which includes a chicken coop and lots of homemade ice cream) and passion for family life has led to some skeptical news coverage, including a New York Times profile that Sean Duffy called a “hit piece.” For that article, the reporter tracked down footage of the MTV reality shows which Campos-Duffy and her husband starred in during their early 20s and contrasted their lives then and now. Responding to the piece, an editorial in the National Catholic Register said the article showed “the contempt the (newspaper) has for traditional faith-based values.”
Of that sort of criticism, Campos-Duffy told me, “Reality TV and politics have given me the skin of an armadillo. Everything rolls off my back.”
The couple has never shied away from that period of their life. Sean Duffy mentioned it at his confirmation hearing, and at last year’s AmericaFest, put on by Turning Point USA, a video compilation showed clips from the show, including the moment they met.
At that event, Campos-Duffy told the young people in attendance that their family, not their work, would be their legacy.
Campos-Duffy’s father joined the Air Force at 18 and met his wife when he was stationed in Spain. They would ultimately have four children, with Campos-Duffy being born in England and then living in Spain, Turkey and Peru while growing up.
After graduating from high school in California, she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in international affairs, intending to pursue a career as a diplomat.
A casting call, and an internship in Venezuela, changed that plan.
During the internship, Campos-Duffy, who is fluent in Spanish, discovered she really “didn’t want to be a bureaucrat.”
And in the early ‘90s, MTV was pioneering a new kind of reality show, one in which strangers lived in a house together. The “Real World” franchise was all the talk on college campuses, and Campos-Duffy auditioned on a whim and was selected — as was the man who would become her husband.
They weren’t initially on the same show, but were later both picked for a special featuring people from different series. Their meeting was captured on camera, and once that door opened, love flew in fast. Campos-Duffy told me that soon after they met, she told Duffy she would marry him.
Sean Duffy confirmed that version of events, telling me in an email, “Early in our friendship, I took Rachel out to breakfast at a diner in St. Paul, Minnesota. We weren’t actually dating at the time. The breakfast lasted three hours because we were enjoying each other’s company. At the end of the breakfast, out of the blue, Rachel said, ‘I think I love you and I’m going to marry you.’ I was floored. We’ve been together ever since.”
They were married 18 months later at a Catholic church in Arizona and soon moved to Wisconsin, where Duffy was from, and where he would practice law and become a district attorney.
Then the babies started coming. None were planned. At the same time, Campos-Duffy was getting offers to work television, because of her work on MTV. She took on work only when it fit in with her family life. She made appearances on “The View” and did a Lifetime show with Florence Henderson, “Speaking of Women’s Health.”
She wrote a book, “Stay Home, Stay Happy: 10 Secrets to Loving At-Home Motherhood.”
She also served as a spokesperson for The LIBRE Initiative, a nonprofit that works to promote free enterprise and economic opportunity in Hispanic communities. That work led to appearances on Fox News, which led to contributor status.
“And eventually, at the ripe old age of 50, I got a job, a hosting job,” she said.
‘We’re lifers ... we believe in life’
In 2019, after 10 years in Congress, Sean Duffy resigned, making national headlines because of the reason: The couple had learned that the child they were expecting, their ninth, would have serious health problems.
“With much prayer, I have decided that this is the right time for me to take a break from public service in order to be the support my wife, baby and family need right now,” Sean Duffy said in a statement announcing his resignation.
When the couple appeared on “The View,” Campos-Duffy told Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman, “Yeah, it’s gonna be a little more stressful, but this little baby will have eight other siblings to wrap their loving arms around her, and we’re gonna do it as a family. We’ll figure out a different way to balance our lives.”
Her husband added on that show, “It’s pretty easy for us in the sense that we’re lifers. We believe in life, and whatever gifts God gives us, we accept them.”
Valentina was born a month early with Down syndrome and with two holes in her heart that had to be corrected with surgery.
Now 6 years old and enrolled in a public school, Valentina has made cameo appearances on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” and Campos-Duffy has become an advocate for children with special needs, saying that Valentina “is the best thing that ever happened to our family.”
Early to rise
After Campos-Duffy joined Fox, the family soon realized that commuting from Wisconsin to New York City wouldn’t work. They moved to New Jersey, and in 2023, Sean Duffy also joined Fox, as a co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business, a job he left after being invited to join the second Trump administration.
By then, Campos-Duffy had settled into a comfortable routine. She’s usually home during the week, but gets up at 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday in order to be on the air at the Fox studio in midtown Manhattan from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.
She showers the night before, so she can climb in the car at 3:30 (she has a driver) without worrying about hair, makeup or clothes, which will be done when she gets to the studio, along with reading for the show.
“By 6, I’m in the chair and we’re going live. It’s a 4-hour show, and I’m home by 11:15,” she said. “It’s the weekend, so a lot of my kids aren’t even up, or are just rolling out of bed.”
And, she points out, she doesn’t stop being a mom because she’s on the air.
“On a commercial break, I’m like, who emptied the dishwasher? Empty it, and make sure it’s all done before I get home. Is Dad awake? It’s a family, you know? And the family just makes it all work out. I have great kids; my oldest daughter is there right now, because with all the book stuff, it’s been really busy."
Her latest book is a passion project because Campos-Duffy believes that America’s 250th anniversary presents an opportunity for the nation to heal from the acrimony and polarization that has simmered over the past few decades.
She is a cheerleader for America and attributes the decline in patriotism to cultural Marxism promoted in public schools and universities.
“All of us have to do something to reverse that, because the truth is, we live in the greatest country on Earth. We were exceptional in 1776, and we’re still exceptional. The Willy Wonka golden ticket is America citizenship,” she told me. “We as parents and grandparents have to start retelling that story.”
“All American Patriotism,” which will be released May 19, is comprised of some of those stories, written by 30 Fox News personalities, including Dana Perino, Abby Hornacek, Shannon Bream, Sean Hannity and, yes, Sean Duffy. “Our brains are wired for stories,” Campos-Duffy said.
But she also offered up some practical measures that she believes will help get Americans feeling positive about America again.
For one thing, she said, fly a flag outside your house; the bigger, the better. She’s also a big proponent of road trips, like the ones her parents took her on for America’s 200th birthday — they drove across the country to see Constitution Hall and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. (Sean Duffy also talks up road trips in the essay he wrote for his wife’s new book, and they will soon release a video series based on road trips the family recently took.)
Campos-Duffy is also fan of national parks, and recently visited the Grand Canyon again with her family, but also thinks every American should visit Washington, D.C.
“Call your congressman or senator. They will arrange a tour. And if you give your congressman enough notice, you can also get a White House tour, although they’re a little harder to get.”
“My theory is, when our government is working correctly, it’s small, it’s efficient, and we don’t even think about it. And all of a sudden, our lives are about our family and our neighbors, our community, and I think that’s a goal that we should be really looking toward.
“We’re involved in politics right now because I think there’s been something fundamentally wrong happening over the last 20 years, and we have to try to get back to who we really are. … (America) 250 is a chance. All of us have had things in our life that are going wrong, and we have to recalibrate. We have another chance to do it again. And maybe 250 is a chance for all of us to reassess what we love about America, why we love America, why she was founded, and get back to the basics.”
