Jill Biden Gives Update on Joe’s ‘Challenging’ Stage 4 Cancer Battle

Jill Biden is opening up about the painful reality facing her family as former President Joe Biden continues treatment for stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

“He’s doing okay,” the former first lady said during an August 4 appearance on SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa.

But behind that reassuring update is a far more difficult truth. According to Jill, her husband’s advanced cancer diagnosis is something the Biden family must now confront every day.

“He was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer,” Jill explained. “For anyone who’s listening, really, that diagnosis, you can be cured, and you can go through radiation or whatever. You can be cured, and you’ll be fine. Unfortunately for Joe, it metastasized to his bones.”

The former president, now 83, announced his diagnosis in May 2025, only months after leaving the White House. Because the cancer had already spread beyond his prostate, Jill said her husband will “forever live with cancer.”

“We have to be mindful of it every three months, testing and medicines,” she said. “And anybody who’s gone through this cancer journey — and I’ve been through it many times with members of my family, of course with Beau — it’s constant. It’s daily. And I think it’s challenging.”

The diagnosis has forced the Biden family to confront another devastating cancer battle after the death of Joe’s eldest son, Beau Biden.

Beau, the former Delaware attorney general and an Iraq War veteran, died in 2015 at age 46 after battling an aggressive form of brain cancer. His death profoundly affected both Joe and Jill, who have frequently spoken about the grief that followed.

Joe shared Beau, Hunter Biden and daughter Naomi with his first wife, Neilia Biden. Neilia and 13-month-old Naomi were killed in a 1972 car crash. Joe married Jill in 1977, and they later welcomed daughter Ashley Biden.

During the SiriusXM interview, Kelly Ripa also pushed back against accusations that Jill or others close to Joe had concealed his cancer while he was president.

Ripa said her own father was diagnosed with prostate cancer after experiencing similar symptoms and argued that the disease can go undetected, particularly in older men who may not receive routine prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, testing.

“When people were like, ‘There’s no way you can’t know,’ oh, yes, there is,” Ripa said. “Because they don’t test men over 70 years old for prostate cancer. So it can be living there for all of those years, growing slowly, and eventually metastasize.”

Jill said White House doctors had been following guidance from the American Urological Association and did not administer the PSA blood test. It was only after the Bidens left Washington that she became increasingly concerned about her husband’s persistent symptoms.

“When it continued when we got out of the White House, I said, ‘Joe, we’ve got to go up to Jeff in Philly — something’s wrong,’” she recalled. “And so we did. But I never, oh my God, I never thought it would be prostate cancer.”

The comments offer a direct response to critics who have suggested Biden’s diagnosis must have been known earlier. Jill’s account portrays a family blindsided by the severity of the illness rather than one deliberately keeping it hidden.

There have been some encouraging signs. Sources told The Washington Post in June that the former president’s treatment appeared to be working. However, they also said the grueling medical battle had left him looking noticeably frail.

For Jill, the fight is now a constant cycle of medication, testing and waiting for the next medical update.

After decades of personal tragedy and public scrutiny, the Bidens are once again facing an intensely private crisis in full view of the country — and this time, Jill says, there may never be a moment when cancer is completely behind them.