For Dave Coulier, a minor cough and cold aren’t so minor anymore. Four days before our Feb. 26 conversation, the Full House star — who was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2024 — was discharged from a Detroit-area hospital for an unexpected multi-night stay for a rhinovirus, often referred to as a common cold.
Judging by his beaming smile and punctual arrival for our Zoom chat on a frigid winter day from his home in St. Clair, Mich., one would have no idea the 65-year-old actor is living with cancer — other than, maybe, his lack of hair (his hat collection is growing, he says).
After recently completing a sixth round of chemotherapy treatment, “I started to get pretty sick,” Coulier exclusively tells Parade. “I didn’t know that I had caught a virus. I was in bed for about 10 days just trying to figure out, ‘Do I have a cold? Am I just feeling the ramifications of this cumulative effect of the chemo? What is going on?’”
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It was almost like déjà vu. Coulier’s cancer diagnosis came shortly after he came down with an upper respiratory infection that caused unusual swelling in his lymph nodes. This time, the Fuller House alum — whose type of cancer affects the lymphatic system and compromises the immune system — was found with what he describes as deposits at the bottom of his lungs.
“There’s a thing called [ground-glass opacity (GGO)]. On a scan, in your lungs it looks like particles of glass,” Coulier explains. That, coupled with a cold, he says, “was wreaking havoc in my system.” Had Coulier’s wife, Melissa Coulier, not insisted her husband go for a checkup, his doctors felt, “We might not have been able to turn this around.”
Coulier’s hospital visit was just another arduous step up a steep hill he’s been climbing. The last few months have been such a whirlwind that he forgot to properly celebrate after finishing his sixth round of chemotherapy.
“I was in such a daze when I walked out of the hospital, my wife looked at me [when] we got in the car, and she goes, ‘We forgot to ring the bell.’”
Coulier immediately began chemo treatment after receiving his cancer diagnosis. He completed his last round in February, but the entire process took an incredible emotional and physical toll on his body.
“The symptoms were getting worse and worse with each treatment,” Coulier says. “So neuropathy, which I hadn’t experienced before, started to increase. Nausea started to increase. Dizziness started to increase. They call it chemo brain, where you’re a bit foggy — that started to increase. My days of being able to get up and walk around and be active started to decrease.
“Some days, I just didn’t want to do anything,” Coulier candidly explains, admitting that his condition got so bad by his sixth treatment, he didn’t have the will to get out of bed. “Though I wanted to move around and go out and, you know, work around the house, I just couldn’t. There was so much cancer-related fatigue that got progressively worse and worse and worse, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is how it’s going to go.’”
Melissa Coulier
Long before Coulier stepped into the Hawaiian-T-shirt-wearing shoes of Joey Gladstone on the TGIF staple Full House, he was doing standup in Detroit, where he coincidentally met future co-star Bob Saget during one of the late, great TV dad’s comedy tours. As the story goes, Saget scribbled his number on a napkin and told Coulier to contact him when he got to Los Angeles, an offer the aspiring comedian could not refuse.
After a few weeks of Coulier crashing on Saget’s couch when he touched down in L.A., the “Full House Rewind” podcast host eventually found his footing on the West Coast, pursuing standup and taking small gigs before landing his big break on the long-running ABC sitcom centered around the Tanner family.
“I miss Bob so much. I truly had a brother [in him],” Coulier says of Saget, who died in January 2022 at 65 (the same age Coulier is now) after accidental blunt force trauma to the head, likely caused by a fall. “I met Bob when I was 18 years old. And by the way, yes, he comes to me in my dreams, and he always does something silly and foolish and makes me laugh. He would have called me every day.”
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“How are you doing? What’s the prognosis, Dave? Tell me what’s going on,” Coulier imagines the conversation going, adding: “He would have driven me crazy. It was a lovable crazy that he had. I think about him often.”
Sometimes, Coulier misses Saget’s presence so much that he’ll pick up the phone to reach out. “I’ll be having a moment of clarity, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, call Bob,’ and then I realize I can’t,” he says. “And then I realize I can’t call anybody and tell them this thought that I have right now because Bob is the only one who would think so outrageously to be able to respond to it.”
Still, he has a solid support system in his wife, Melissa, 41, whom he married in July 2014 after nearly a decade of dating. Since Coulier’s diagnosis, she’s handled everything from changing his sweat-soaked sheets to fine-tuning his diet with a more holistic approach by making everything from scratch, including the one meal her husband craved the most: pizza.
Melissa Coulier
“Seeing my wife exhausted on those days when I’m like, ‘Can you get me some water?’ and ‘I haven’t taken my pills yet’… She’s been running ragged helping me. That’s the picture that will stay with me — how this affects your family members,” Coulier says. “People who go through this know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Melissa herself was diagnosed with lupus in 2006, and as the co-founder of holistic wellness company Live Well Lead Well, she did what she knows best to help her husband, and he saw results almost immediately.
“Hell, I gave up a lot of fun foods,” Coulier explains begrudgingly. “I love sushi, so I couldn’t have any raw fish because of the bacteria levels that can exist, and my body wouldn’t be able to fight it off. I was a big dessert guy. I always celebrated. If we’re going out to dinner, I’m having dessert because we’re out: ‘This is special.’”
Now, he says, “I’m a firm believer that what you put into your body is exactly what you’ll get back. So I’ve completely cut out all sugar. Because of my age and because I still like to play ice hockey, I had a lot of inflammation, and once I stopped sugar, it was gone in a matter of seven days.”
Melissa, who is also a fitness instructor and photographer, never imagined their lives would be upended like they were when Coulier received his diagnosis. “I care-gave for his father a couple of years ago, and so the last thing I thought [was that] I was gonna be caregiving for Dave next,” Melissa tells Parade.
Coulier has faced lots of family tragedy through the years. His mother, Arlen, died at 82 in 2014 from breast cancer. His sister Sharon, 36, and niece Shannon, 29, both also died from breast cancer. His father, David, died in 2022 at age 91 shortly after his brother Dan died by suicide in 2021 weeks before his 59th birthday. His older sister, Karen, also lives with cancer.
Because the various cancer diagnoses in his family have mainly been attributed to mutations in the BRCA1 gene, which primarily impacts females, according to Melissa, “I never thought that he would actually ever be diagnosed with cancer. It was kind of a wild thing, even though cancer is so prevalent in his family history.” When Coulier gave his wife the news, “she collapsed once the reality hit her,” he says, adding that in that moment, they held each other and cried.
Melissa Coulier
Getting Coulier through tough days is his affable sense of humor, even if some people aren’t in on the joke. In November, Coulier came to the defense of longtime pal and former Full House co-star John Stamos after the two posed for photos sporting bald heads (with Stamos, 61, using a cap and the magic of photoshop to create the illusion). Some, however, felt the pictures were insensitive towards those actually dealing with the day-to-day effects of the disease.
Coulier has no regrets about the photos and wishes people would let him deal with his emotions in the way he knows best. “I think people misunderstood my personal relationship with my buddy John Stamos,” Coulier, who says Stamos will FaceTime him almost daily to check in, explains. “He knows what makes me laugh, and when he walked out like that, I fell on the floor laughing. It wasn’t us making fun of others so much as it was: Let’s laugh our way through this because this is a tough journey.
“That’s what was confusing to both John and I. We’re not trying to send any kind of weird message to people or making fun of people. This is he and I sharing our personal relationship together, and so, we apologized,” Coulier explains. “Then we just thought, ‘Why are we apologizing? We don’t need to apologize. This is our friendship.’ So that was kind of how we rode through that.”
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Still, Coulier is realistic about his situation. “I think everybody’s mind goes there,” he says of death. “It’s part of the reality of life. Like, ‘Wow, this is really serious’ and ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ I’ve seen it so often in my family.”
Melissa reveals that she and her husband had the difficult “what if” conversations as the cancer became harder on the actor’s body.
“After [the fifth round of] chemo, he was like, ‘I don’t know if I could do this again,’” Melissa shares. “He was like, ‘I’m prepared either way. If I die, I die. And if I can stay here, great. I want to.’ Those conversations were obviously so tough.”
After Coulier received a positive update following a PET scan halfway through his treatment, he began to feel optimistic. Doctors didn’t see anymore cancer cells, Coulier shares. “They carpet-bombed me for three more treatments after that, and they’re not expecting to see anything [further].” (Coulier notes that there could be a “very high” curability rate with this type of lymphoma and chemotherapy treatment.)
The new grandfather (his 34-year-old son, Luc — whom he shares with first wife Jayne Modean — welcomed a baby boy with his wife, Alex, on March 27) prides himself on his upbeat demeanor for getting him through to the finish line. “I don’t know how else to view this other than with a positive attitude,” Coulier shares. “And especially because I’m in a position where I can inspire others. A negative attitude doesn’t inspire anybody. Positivity, though, can take you a long way.”
Melissa Coulier
It may seem surprising, but Coulier feels lucky. “I don’t feel cursed,” he says, adding that seeing how cancer spread through his family equipped him with valuable knowledge he can bestow onto others. “I feel like I’m one of so many who has cancer.” But with Coulier’s platform, given the massive Full House fandom, the V Foundation for Cancer Research — which has funded nearly $400 million in cancer research grants in North America — invited him to be an ambassador. Things like that, he says, can make a world of difference.
“Maybe I’ve been blessed in some strange way,” he adds. “I know it sounds out there a little bit, but maybe I’ve been, you know, given this torch, and a magic wand waved itself over me and said, ‘Dave, you can do something here.’”
In recent weeks, Coulier had a biopsy on a lymph node in his neck. “Melissa and I waited for a week to get the biopsy results back, and there is no sign of cancer,” he explains. “One of the few times in my life when ‘zero’ has been a great number to hear.”
But Coulier is not out of the woods just yet. He awaits the results of an additional CAT scan, which will determine if his cancer “will be in the rear-view mirror,” he says, and hopes to go back to the hospital and ring that bell — with his supportive wife by his side.
“I’ll tell you this. Today is the first day that I really feel like, ‘Wow, I’m feeling pretty darn good. I feel like myself.’ And it’s today,” Coulier tells Parade through a smile. “So I get to celebrate that with you.”
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