What To Know
- Ginger Zee shared a sweet photo she took during her parents’ visit to the Good Morning America set.
- Zee and her Instagram followers also celebrated her mother’s upcoming graduation with an MD.
- Earlier this month, Zee opened up about her family’s history after finding an old photo of her father and grandfather.
Ginger Zee had some special visitors join her behind the scenes of Good Morning America.
Following the ABC series’ Thursday, November 20, episode, Zee revealed that she had been joined by her parents on the GMA set that morning. “Not every day I get to have my parents with me at work!” Zee captioned an Instagram backstage snap she took with her mother, Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, and stepfather, Carl Craft. “Mom is finishing up a clinical rotation at Sloan Kettering, and the kids have enjoyed having grandpa around. She graduates with her MD in the spring – still pretty wild, and we are all so proud.”
Fans loved seeing the sweet family reunion and congratulated Zee’s mother on her career success. “This is so awesome! Congrats to your mom!” one fan commented underneath the post.
Another added, “That is so amazing, excellence runs in the Family! Glad they got to see how amazing you do your job in person ❤️🫶🏻 Congratulations momma bear 🎉🎉.”
“I see both of them in you, God bless them,” someone else shared.
A different user wrote, “Not hard to see where the Science and the Drive comes from🙌 Go Doctor Mom👏👏👏.”
Zee’s mother divorced her father, Robert Zuidgeest, during her childhood. In a 2018 essay for Guideposts Magazine, the meteorologist opened up about how her paternal grandmother, Hilda Zuidgeest, served as a “source of stability” for her amid her parents’ divorce.
“She and my grandfather had emigrated from Holland in the 1950s, after enduring the brutal Nazi occupation during WWII,” she wrote “What she suffered was horrendous, much of which she never talked about, yet she and my grandfather had come through the experience somehow stronger (like I said, I’ve seen this time and again with people who have suffered terrible loss).”
Zee went on to share that her grandmother “had a thick accent and a great sense of humor,” adding, “She was tall, strong, with curly white hair and a taste for craft-show sweatshirts with colorful appliqués. Most of all she was honest—intensely honest—with others, with herself, with me.”
Earlier this month, Zee opened up about her father’s family history while sharing an old family photo via Instagram. “My aunt sent our family this photo of my dad and my Opa (grandpa) leaving the Netherlands to immigrate to the United States In the late 1950s,” she captioned the black-and-white snap. “She sent it as my father was returning to Rotterdam for the first time since he came over via ship at age seven or so.”
In the photo, Zee’s father and grandfather looked into the camera while standing on a boat traveling to the U.S. Fans shared their own family stories in the post’s comments, with one user writing, “As our family historian (and I just solved a big mystery), I so cherish this photo! ❤️.”
“My family came from the Netherlands to the US in 1960 by ship. I was born in Rotterdam. Also, you resemble your dad,” a different person commented, while someone else wrote, “My Opa came over from the Netherlands and then my Oma came over a bit later with 5 kids under 9. We have a journal that my Opa wrote documenting his journey in Dutch and it was translated by a foreign exchange student when I was in high school.”
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