Gloria Vanderbilt’s 4 Children: All About Stan, Christopher, Carter and Anderson Cooper

Gloria Vanderbilt is best remembered as a socialite, writer and fashion trailblazer from one of America’s most storied families, but she was also a mom to four sons.

Vanderbilt was married four times, to Hollywood agent Pat DiCicco, composer Leopold Stokowski, director Sidney Lumet and author Wyatt Cooper.

With Stokowski, she had Leopold Stanislaus “Stan” Stokowski in 1950 and Christopher Stokowski in 1952. With Cooper, she welcomed Carter Vanderbilt Cooper in 1965 and Anderson Hays Cooper in 1967. Vanderbilt’s third son, Carter, died by suicide in 1988, when he was 23 years old.

Anderson, who has gone on to have an illustrious career in news, has often talked about the grief of losing his brother and later, his mother, after her June 17, 2019, death.

He honored Vanderbilt in an on-air tribute soon after and said that “love is what [Vanderbilt] believed in, more than anything.” Anderson added, “Gloria Vanderbilt died as she lived: on her own terms.”

Here’s everything to know about Gloria Vanderbilt’s four children, Stan, Christopher, Carter and Anderson.

Leopold Stanislaus “Stan” Stokowski

Carter Vanderbilt Cooper was born on Jan. 27, 1965.

When Carter was little, his mother always included him in her life, as Anderson told PEOPLE in 2016.

“If famous people were coming over to the house, like Charlie Chaplin or Truman Capote, we would be sitting at the table next to them,” he said. “There wasn’t a kids’ table. We weren’t sort of shunted off somewhere. We would be expected to kind of learn about who was coming and watch their movies and be able to converse with them.”

In 1978, the family was rocked by the death of dad Wyatt Cooper, who died while undergoing open-heart surgery. He was 50 years old.

Growing up, Carter attended the Dalton School in New York City and graduated from Princeton University in 1987, per The New York Times.

On July 22, 1988, Carter died by suicide after falling from the balcony of Vanderbilt’s 14th-floor apartment. Vanderbilt was looking on when it happened.

“When I lay in bed, I would see in front of me a huge screen like in a movie theater, and the whole thing would play over and over again,” she told PEOPLE in 1997. “I’d blame myself for all the things I could think of that I could have done while it was happening. What if I’d pretended to faint? Maybe if I’d spoken very softly and logically and tried to reason with him. I haunt myself with that.”

In 2016, Vanderbilt and Anderson published a book — called The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son Talk About Life, Love, and Loss — about Carter’s death.

While talking to PEOPLE, Vanderbilt said that it brought her comfort to discuss her late son.

“Some people … who knew Carter will start to talk about him and then say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ And I say, ‘No, I love to talk about him. More, more, more,’ ” Vanderbilt said. “Because that brings him alive and it brings him closer and it means that he hasn’t been forgotten.”

In 2021, Anderson told PEOPLE that Carter’s death is still “inconceivable” to him.

“Any time you lose a loved one, especially when you’re younger, it alters the trajectory of your life,” he said. “I’ve lived more of my life without him than I have with him. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what he would be doing, who he would be, and I still think about his death and have questions about it.”

Anderson Hays Cooper

Vanderbilt and Cooper welcomed their son Anderson Cooper on June 3, 1967.

He has hosted his own CNN show, Anderson Cooper 360, since 2003.  He’s also a correspondent for 60 Minutes, the host of his own podcast and the author of several books.

Anderson and Vanderbilt were extremely close, in part, due to Carter’s death.

“I think it obviously brought us together in ways and I think you can’t help but come closer going through something like that … it left us with each other,” Anderson told PEOPLE in 2016. The same year, Vanderbilt and Anderson created their HBO documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper.

“When my mom turned 91, I wanted to use the time that we have left in our lives to get to know each other as adults,” he told PEOPLE. “I realized I didn’t want there to be anything left unsaid with my mom, I didn’t want there to be questions that I still had about who she was and what her life was like. And I didn’t want her to have questions about me as an adult.”

In 2020, Anderson welcomed son Wyatt Morgan, whose name honors his father, Wyatt Cooper and his mother. 

“My son’s middle name is Morgan. It’s a family name on my mom’s side,” he wrote on Instagram. “I know my mom and dad liked the name Morgan because I recently found a list they made 52 years ago when they were trying to think of names for me.”

In 2022, he had another son, Sebastian Luke. Anderson told PEOPLE in 2023 that both of his sons now play with the same toys he and Carter played with as kids.

The grief of losing his mother, father and brother inspired him to start his podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper.

“It’s not really discussed openly, but grief is a bond that we all share,” he told PEOPLE in 2022. “I realized this is something we all go through or all will go through in one way or another.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.