Stephen Colbert and wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert opened up about early relationship stress at a New York Public Radio fundraiser — namely who of the then long-distance couple would give up their local public radio station by moving halfway across the country.

She was full on WNYC New York. The host of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert said he “defended WBEZ Chicago to the best of my ability. A very reputable station. It was actually a source of some tension.”

“She did move to Chicago,” he said. “We got married, and I immediately got a job back in New York, so we moved back, and I soon found out that I had been wrong. WBEZ is a fine station, but there’s only one of it, and there’s three WNYCs and WQXRs – AM, FM and WQXR, the trifecta,” he said at the event Tuesday night (referring to the talk and classical music stations under the same umbrella) as the couple was honored alongside David Remnick. longtime editor of The New Yorker and host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, and Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation.

“WNYC got you going in the morning with all the information and all the culture and all the things you needed to know about New York and our country … And, at the end of a long day, WQXR was there like a frosty mug of Xanax to calm you down,” he said.

Evelyn Colbert said the couple “actually scheduled our days around WNYC. Stephen even taped a printout of the WNYC schedule to the back of our kitchen cabinet. And when we went to move our Honda Accord for alternate side of the street parking, we desperately tried to fit it between Morning Edition and Brian Lehrer, which was really stressful.”

Said Colbert: “Now. wherever we are in the world, on radio or streaming, our kitchens are still permanently tuned to WNYC. We make breakfast to Morning Edition, we make dinner to Marketplace. And if we find ourselves brushing our teeth to the sounds of Indian or Indonesian jazz gamelan, we know that’s New Sounds, and we have stayed up past our bedtime.”

The fundraiser followed Congress rescinding $1.1 billion in federal funding to NPR, PBS and public stations as part of President Donald Trump’s spending cuts, putting many local stations at risk. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which administers the funds, is in the process of winding down operations.

Around the same time, and with its sale to Skydance under review at the FCC, Paramount announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would end its run in May 2026.

Remnick in his remarks called the Colberts “treasures” and said, “I’m absolutely sure that when winter turns to spring and Stephen’s unbelievable run on late night television comes to an unjust close, a ridiculous close, but a triumphal close, I’m absolutely sure that he’ll find another way to enrich our lives, To make us laugh and to make us a great deal smarter.”

“We live in a dark time, a threatening time,” Remnick said. When Vladimir Putin came to office in Russia, “they came after the comedians.”

“They shut down a show called Kukly, a funny, political satirical show, and Putin first revealed his face by showing that he could not laugh at himself. This must sound quite familiar. It was not long after that, radio stations, television stations, newspapers and eventually, internet outlets began feeling not only the pressure, but were shut down,” he said. We cannot kid ourselves about the era that we are living in. This is a test.”

On The Late Show last night, Colbert weighed in on the House’s vote to release the Epstein files. “Of course, this vote doesn’t mean the Epstein files will be released right away. The bill now has to go to the Senate, where it may be amended. And if it’s passed there, and amended, it would go back to the House, where it has to cross a river, and under the bridge is a troll, and to get by the troll, you have to answer his riddle: ‘What walks on two cankles in the morning, rides a golf cart in the afternoon and is totally in the Epstein files?’”

New York Public Radio CEO, president and executive chair LaFontaine Oliver said, “make no mistake, the elimination of federal funding was absolutely meant to bring about an ending. The end of unbiased journalism without fear or favor. The end of independent voices who raise a mirror so that we can see ourselves more clearly. And the end of mission driven institutions and individuals who work to protect and advance human dignity.

“But if you’ve been listening to the radio lately, you know what how we feel about that. You can defund public media, you can cancel grants, you can zero out the line item. You can shut down CPB. But you can’t defund the truth.”