lit a candle 4h agoMy mom had Joni Table Talk on every morning before school. Watched the news with her on the phone today, both of us quiet for a minute.
Their story
Joni Lamb, born Joni Trammell on July 19, 1960, in Colleyville, Texas, spent four decades in front of and behind the cameras of Christian television, and with her first husband Marcus Lamb built the Daystar Television Network from a single Dallas-Fort Worth station into one of the largest religious broadcasters…
Joni Lamb, born Joni Trammell on July 19, 1960, in Colleyville, Texas, spent four decades in front of and behind the cameras of Christian television, and with her first husband Marcus Lamb built the Daystar Television Network from a single Dallas-Fort Worth station into one of the largest religious broadcasters in the world. She died on May 7, 2026, at the age of 65.
Although she was born in Texas, Joni grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, where her family attended the Tremont Avenue Church of God. Around 1980 a young traveling evangelist named Marcus Lamb came to preach a revival there. They met at her home church and married in 1982, and for the next few years they traveled together holding meetings in churches. She later described that season as her first taste of life in the public eye, and admitted she had once been petrified of speaking before crowds.
In 1984 the couple settled in Montgomery, Alabama, and put their own money, along with gifts from relatives and friends, into a television station. WMCF-TV, branded 45 Alive, went on the air in 1985 as the first full-power Christian station in Alabama, with Marcus and Joni co-hosting a nightly program. She later called the Montgomery years "the tribulation." In 1990 they sold the station and moved to Dallas to build in a larger market, and in 1993 KMPX-TV 29 went on the air in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. By 1998 the operation had become the Daystar Television Network, and in 2003 it moved into a 90,000 square foot International Ministry Center in Bedford, Texas.
Marcus urged her to host her own show because she was good at interviewing people. Taking a Break with Joni began in 1998, became The Joni Show in 2001 and was renamed Joni Table Talk in 2010. The round-table format, in which Joni and a circle of women discussed faith, family, health and current events, won the National Religious Broadcasters award for TV Talk Show of the Year in 2004. Her publisher later credited the show with ten Telly Awards, three Lone Star Emmy Awards and five Daytime Emmy nominations, and it was syndicated to outlets including A+E, FYI and Fox Business. She also co-hosted the flagship live program first called Celebration, then Marcus and Joni, and from 2020 Ministry Now, alongside family members.
Her life was not without storms, the word she used for the title of her 2024 memoir, Through the Storm: Courageous Faith in Turbulent Times. In 2007 she learned that Marcus had had an affair. She wrote that she heard God say "He is worth fighting for," and the couple entered three years of counseling before disclosing the affair on air in December 2010, when former employees threatened to go public. Daystar also drew criticism over prosperity preachers on its schedule, Joni's on-air statements on homosexuality, vaccines and the 2020 election, and a $3.9 million federal pandemic loan that was returned after scrutiny of a jet purchase.
Marcus Lamb died of complications of COVID-19 on November 30, 2021, at 64, after 39 years of marriage. Joni became president of Daystar and steered it through expansion, including the launch of Daystar Espanol in 2022 and wider reach in Canada, Puerto Rico and Latin America. On June 10, 2023, she married Dr. Doug Weiss, a psychologist and author who became her co-host. In 2024 her son Jonathan was dismissed from the network, and he and his wife Suzy publicly alleged that a family member had abused their young daughter and that the matter had been mishandled. Joni denied the allegations and called the campaign a smear; police filed no charges, and the family rift was never publicly healed.
Daystar announced on May 7, 2026, that she had died that morning. The network said she had faced serious health matters in private and that a recent back injury had compounded them; no official cause of death was released. Hundreds attended a public memorial at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, on May 18, with recorded tributes from President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and words from Joel Osteen, Jentezen Franklin and Samuel Rodriguez, who called her "both a lamb and a lioness." She was survived by her husband Doug Weiss and her children Jonathan Lamb, Rachel Lamb Brown and Rebecca Lamb Weiss and their families.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Associated Press; NBC News; CBS Texas; Christian Post; CBN; Fort Worth Report (May 19, 2026); Daystar Television Network history and statements; Charisma Media. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“He is worth fighting for.”
Words she said she heard from God in 2007 after learning of Marcus Lamb's affair, as recounted to CBN
“I was angry and broken. Our home felt like a brick-and-mortar shell.”
On discovering the affair in 2007, CBN interview about Through the Storm (2024)
“Before long, I was talking more than he was and asking lots of questions. He said, 'You need your own show, you are good at interviewing people.'”
On how her talk show began, CBN (2024)
“That season was wonderful and brutal, rewarding and devastating.”
On building Daystar in the 1990s, CBN (2024)
“It is the raw Joni Lamb telling her story from all the way back when Marcus and I started.”
On her memoir Through the Storm, Daystar blog interview (2024)
“If you live in America and you understand that we are a Christian society then you can't be offended, or you shouldn't live here.”
On-air remark on Daystar, 2012
Photos
1Joni Lamb, co-founder and president of Daystar Television Network
by People Forever
same here, my grandmother never missed it