‘Freaky’: Katie Couric diagnosed with amnesia after stroke scare

It was a day that longtime broadcast journalist Katie Couric will never forget -- although at the time, she could not remember it.

Couric, 69, revealed what she called a “freaky” incident that was later diagnosed as temporary memory loss, Entertainment Weekly reported.

In a Substack post called "The Day I’ll Never Remember‚" Couric said she was in Aspen, Colorado, on June 27 and went to a farmer’s market to pick up an iced coffee.

Then everything went blank.

“I thought it was 2024. And I believed Joe Biden was president,” Couric wrote. “Let me explain.

On June 27, Couric walked to the farmer’s market in Aspen to pick up an iced coffee.

When her husband, John Molner, returned home from the gym, the two drove to the Aspen Institute for the Aspen Ideas Festival, where she was a panelist. Couric said she was “excited” to visit the hot dog stand at the festival for lunch.

“That’s the last thing I remember,” she wrote.

Couric said she completed both of her panel appearances but remembered “nothing” from either one of them, Entertainment Weekly reported.

Molner was concerned that Couric, who said she felt weak and dizzy, seemed “out of it,” so he took her to an area hospital.

She was quizzed about several things, but was at a loss. She did not remember the month, believed that Biden was still president, and did not recall that she had a newborn granddaughter, Entertainment Weekly reported.

As the hospital staff initiated “stroke protocol,” Molner noticed his wife “reintroduced herself to the nurses every time they came into the room,” he wrote in Couric’s Substack.

An MRI ruled out a stroke. She was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, “which means you lost your short-term memory,” Couric’s doctor said.

The Mayo Clinic calls the condition “an episode of confusion that comes on suddenly in a person who is otherwise alert.”

“This confused state isn’t caused by a more common neurological condition, such as epilepsy or stroke,” the Mayo Clinic notes.

The entire episode was mystifying, Couric said.

“Someone described it as my brain failing to hit the record button,” she wrote. "This was a freaky occurrence, it could have been much more serious.

“Ultimately, I’m relieved -- even though several hours of a Saturday in June will always be missing for me.”

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