Jonathan Capehart on being seen, coming out, and ‘chosen family’ with Michelle Obama

Jonathan Capehart has built a career on attention. As a journalist, he has spent decades interrogating power and translating the churn of American politics into something legible for audiences. But in a recent conversation with The Advocate, Capehart’s focus shifted away from institutions and toward something more elemental: how people learn who they are, how they decide what they will accept, and how they build a sense of home when traditional structures fall short.

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The interview came as Capehart was still reflecting on a deeply personal conversation with former First Lady Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, on their podcast, IMO. The wide-ranging discussion centered on Capehart’s memoir, Yet Here I Am, and his experiences as a Black gay man navigating family, faith, and public life. What made that exchange resonate, Capehart said, was its emotional clarity and a rare moment of being fully seen.

That sense of recognition began more than a year earlier, on a very public stage. Capehart told The Advocate that after Obama delivered her speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in support of Kamala Harris, he appeared visibly overcome on PBS. The moment came when Obama spoke about the constraints placed on Black ambition and about never having “the grace of failing forward,” never inheriting generational wealth, and never being afforded the luxury of complaint.

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“I’m going to speak personally as an American and as a Black person,” Capehart said on air. “In politics, people want to be seen. They want to be seen in the way their politicians talk to them and talk about them.” When Obama articulated those truths, Capehart said, “I feel seen, and I think people in this hall feel seen. And I’m certain millions of Americans feel seen.”

That reaction traveled far beyond the broadcast. Later that summer, on Martha’s Vineyard, Capehart encountered Obama. She recognized him and hugged him, he said. And she told him she had seen the clip and wanted to thank him.

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Jonathan Capehart speaks onstage at the NETFLIX screening of “Rustin” on August 07, 2023, in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for MVAAFF

Being seen

Capehart, a recognizable voice in American media, spoke about the toll of remaining constantly immersed in that churn, particularly for journalists who cannot afford disengagement. While many Americans can limit their exposure to the news, he has observed that distance itself reflects a form of privilege.

“I love it when someone says, ‘Oh, I don’t watch television,’” Capehart said. “And I’m like, oh, you’re lucky.”

At the same time, he has noticed that when people who typically avoid the news begin asking questions — about fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis or about geopolitical flashpoints suddenly surfacing in everyday conversation, it signals the scale of what is unfolding.

“If someone who doesn’t pay attention to the news… and yet that’s breaking through, that tells you how big a story it is,” Capehart said.

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That insistence on paying attention, even when it is uncomfortable, is not merely a matter of professional discipline for Capehart. It is something he learned early, shaped by a childhood spent moving between worlds. Summers in North Carolina with his Jehovah’s Witness grandmother immersed him in a South still structured by segregation. Those months left indelible impressions: the heat, the dust, the rituals of faith, and the quiet choreography of racial hierarchy.

On the podcast, Capehart described watching his mother return to her hometown and deliberately drive down the town’s broad, manicured boulevard, formally Main Street, colloquially known as “White Street,” rather than taking the quicker route home.

“It was like her slow-motion protest at 15 miles an hour,” he said of her driving her Mercedes-Benz down the street. “The Black daughter of Severn is back in town.”

At the time, Capehart did not fully grasp the significance of that gesture. Born in the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, he was the first in his family to grow up under the promise of formal equality, even as its limits were visible everywhere. He said that writing Yet Here I Am forced him to reckon with how deeply those early experiences shaped his worldview — his skepticism of power, his refusal to shrink, and his insistence on occupying space without apology.

Those lessons would later prove essential as Capehart came to terms with his sexuality and with the realization that love and belonging are not guaranteed by blood alone. In his interview with The Advocate, he reflected on a painful rupture with his grandmother after she disinvited him and his partner from Thanksgiving. He didn’t speak with her for years afterward.

Related: HRC honors Jonathan Capehart, Ina Fried, and Nico Lang for LGBTQ+ journalism that breaks through the noise

“That was really hard,” Capehart said. “But I felt like I needed to stand up for myself.”

Choosing yourself and chosen family

Capehart now sees that moment as formative. It was perhaps the first time he consciously asked himself a question that would echo throughout his life. “How do I want to be treated?” he said.

That question resurfaced during the podcast when Capehart responded to a listener who described feeling rejected by his brothers after they refused to enter a gay bar with him. The listener spoke of invisibility and of showing up for family members who would not fully show up for him.

“At a certain point, you’re going to have to stand up for yourself, family or no family,” Capehart said. “Sometimes, family uses the family tie to keep you in place.” Capehart acknowledged that his perspective is shaped by being an only child, but he was unequivocal about one thing: no relationship, however foundational, entitles someone to diminish you.

“No one has a right to your time, your energy, your thoughts and feelings,” he said, “especially when they are a drain.”

During his interview with The Advocate, Capehart repeatedly returned to the idea of chosen family, the communities he built in New York and elsewhere, often among other Black professionals who shared not only ambition but cultural fluency.

“So it starts with my first long-term partner, Giuseppe,” Capehart said. “And then, you know, when we built our chosen family in New York — Maurice Russell, Dawn Davis, Ron Norsworthy, a whole slew of people. The other Dawn — there are two Dawn Davises — Amy Bernstein, just a slew of people.”

They were, he said, “lawyers, artists, elected officials,” people who challenged him, affirmed him, and taught him by example, often because he was purposefully not “the smartest person in the room.”

“They were places where the shoulders come down,” Capehart said. For him, chosen family was not a rejection of origin but an act of construction. “Everything has been about finding and creating a home,” Capehart said. “A place where I feel safe, I feel most myself.”

That sense of grounding has shaped how Capehart understands success. Asked whether he ever feels tempted to savor having proven doubters wrong as a Pulitzer Prize winner and a prominent television anchor, Capehart rejected the premise, at least at first.

Letting your life speak

“I don’t need to shout,” he said, invoking a phrase that has become a personal creed: “May your life speak louder than your lips.”

Then, with a grin, he allowed himself a sharper edge. “There’s that saying, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’” Capehart said. “I would say revenge is a dish served Saturday and Sunday between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on MS NOW.”

The line doubled as a knowing plug for The Weekend, the MS NOW morning show Capehart co-hosts alongside Eugene Daniels and Jackie Alemany.

Capehart said he no longer feels compelled to explain or defend his success. “All anyone has to do is just Google me,” he said. But he also cautioned that not everything that appears online is true. “Except for those lying stories out there,” he added, referring to recurring claims that he and his husband, Nick Schmit, have adopted children. “There are two separate stories, one saying we adopted a white baby and another one saying we adopted a Black baby,” Capehart said. “None of that is true.”

A pinch me moment and saying the dream out loud

Still, Capehart allows himself moments of awe. He recalled attending a White House dinner in 1999 honoring recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. He attended the event with a former partner.

As the night stretched on, Capehart said, the scene became increasingly surreal. The State Dining Room had emptied, leaving him still talking with President Bill Clinton when then–First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in the doorway leading to the Cross Hall, motioning that it was time to move on. Clinton lingered anyway, continuing the conversation as they walked.

Capehart said he slipped his hand into his pocket and pinched himself as they crossed the iconic red-carpeted hall.

He had grown up, he said, as “this big-headed kid from New Jersey” with outsized dreams and no roadmap, and now he was walking beside the president of the United States, talking casually in the White House. “I don’t take any of this for granted,” Capehart said.

Those pinch me moments have multiplied over the years for the journalist, but the wonder has not faded for Capehart, he said. Instead, it has sharpened Capehart’s awareness of how precarious progress can be — and how quickly people can be rendered invisible when institutions fail, or families fracture.

It’s why he remains wary of the well-meaning cautions adults offer when they tell young people not to “get their hopes up.” Such warnings, Capehart said, often masquerade as protection while quietly planting doubt.

Dreams, he believes, must be spoken aloud to survive.

“When you say them out loud,” he said, “you give them life.”

Watch Jonathan Capehart discuss coming out and the importance of chosen family with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson on IMO below.

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