Although Dean did not specify her current health issues, she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis in 2005. She was diagnosed after feeling fatigued during a trip to Ottawa to introduce Sean, a New York City firefighter, to her family.

“It was the shock of a lifetime,” Dean told PEOPLE in an extensive October 2024 interview about her diagnosis. “I remember just feeling all of it was going to end: that my boyfriend was going to leave me, that I would be in a wheelchair, and I wouldn’t be able to do my job at Fox. All of my dreams kind of came crashing down.”

Dean, who also wrote about her experiences with MS in the 2019 book Mostly Sunny: How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days, married Sean in 2007. They share two sons, Matthew and Theodore.

Since her diagnosis, Dean has been a vocal member of the MS community, reaching out to others with the disease and sharing her experience with it. She told PEOPLE she often tries to respond to MS patients who reach out on social media.

“I feel connected to those people, because I know what it’s like to think your life is going to be over,” she told PEOPLE in 2024. “And I had [Fox News host Neil Cavuto, who was diagnosed with MS in 1997] to say, ‘You’re gonna be okay.’ So I try to let them know that. We’re getting better at fighting MS. And they’re going to be okay.”