Michael Savage - Personal Life

Personal Life

Savage was born Michael Alan Weiner in the Bronx, New York, one of three children of Benjamin and Rae Weiner; he comes from Russian Jewish heritage. He described his childhood as difficult. His father, the owner of an antique shop, died of a heart attack at age 57, and his mother died in 2003.

After graduating from Jamaica High School in 1958, Weiner attended Queens College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1963. After college Weiner taught high school for several years in New York City. His first marriage to Carol Ely in 1964 ended in divorce, and he remarried after meeting his current wife Janet in 1967. His first wife says that she became pregnant twice and aborted both pregnancies over Weiner's objections. During this time Weiner also worked for famous psychedelic drug advocate Timothy Leary as keeper of the stone gatehouse on the Hitchcock Cattle Company estate at Millbrook NY, which Leary had been given access to. Leary hired him to the post because Weiner did not use LSD himself. Weiner then earned two master's degrees in ethnobotany and anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He obtained a Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley, in nutritional ethnomedicine. His thesis was titled Nutritional Ethnomedicine in Fiji.

While in the South Pacific, he became fascinated with the 19th-century sailor Charles Savage, who was believed to have been the first man to bring firearms to Fiji. That fascination led to Weiner's name change to Savage.

Savage and his second wife Janet have two children, a daughter and a son; his son, Russell Weiner, is the founder of the company that produces the Rockstar energy drink. Russell's mother, Janet, served as CFO of his company until July 2009. Daughter Rebecca Lin Yops has worked as an elementary school teacher. Savage has said that although he believes in God, he attends houses of worship only a few times a year. In 1974, Savage and his family moved to Fairfax, California after Savage completed his master's degree at the University of Hawaii. During the 1980s, Savage attended Friday night services at a Chabad house in Berkeley. Savage currently lives in Larkspur, California.