“It’s with you every day”: Matthew Perry’s stepdad Keith Morrison talks loss of ‘Friends’ star

Keith Morrison is well known as a Dateline correspondent, but he’s arguably less well known as the stepfather of the late Matthew Perry.

The journalist married Perry’s mother, Suzanne Langford Perry, in 1981 when Matthew was 12 years old.

On Hoda Kotb‘s Making Space podcast, Morrison shared that he and the rest of Perry’s family are still reeling from his death at 54. The former Friends star struggled with addiction his entire adult life, and his death was attributed to the acute effects of ketamine.

“It’s as other people have told me hundreds of times; it doesn’t go away yet,” Morrison said of his grief and that of Matthew’s mom.

Morrison added, “Toward the end of his life, they were closer than I had seen them for decades … texting each other constantly and him sharing things with her that most middle-aged men don’t share with their mothers.”

“He was happy, and he said so. And he hadn’t said that for a long time,” he expressed of the star, noting that is “a source of comfort.” He also acknowledged it’s “not fair” that Perry “didn’t get to have his third act.”

“[A]s he said himself, ‘If if I suddenly died, people would be shocked, but not too many people would be surprised,'” Morrison added. “And he was right.”