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).
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“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.”
“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.’”
Dave Coulier Shares Intimate Details of His Cancer Journey & Talks About his 'Full House' Family (9:05)“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.’”
'I'm feeling pretty darn good,' Coulier exclusively tells Parade.Melissa Coulier
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.
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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.
'It's important that I've gotten to go through this journey with an incredible partner, my wife Melissa,' says Coulier.Melissa Coulier
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.
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.”
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.
'Finally, my wife, Melissa, said, 'Enough's enough. We're going to have a doctor come over.'Melissa Coulier
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.
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Melissa reveals that she and her husband had the difficult “what if” conversations as the cancer became harder on the actor’s body.
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.”
'I kind of look like Uncle Fester if he would pick out a hat,' Coulier jokes.Melissa Coulier
“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.’”
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.
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