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Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was seen caring for her boyfriend, New York Rangers legend Ron Duguay, amid the athlete’s battle with cancer.
In an Instagram video shared by Duguay’s daughter, Shay Thomas, on Tuesday, February 24, Palin, 62, was filmed feeding spoonfuls of food to Duguay, 68, as he rested in a hospital bed. The politician was also tagged in the video by Thomas.
The footage was shared the same day that Thomas and her sister, Amber Stavros, whom Duguay shares with ex-wife Robin Bobo, launched a GoFundMe page to raise funds for the former ice hockey player’s ongoing cancer treatment.
Palin, who began dating Duguay in 2022, was featured a second time within Thomas’ video, posing alongside her boyfriend as the pair smiled for a selfie. The clip otherwise focused on Duguay’s cancer journey, compiling photos and videos that showed the athlete undergoing varied treatments across multiple hospital visits.
Page Six reported on Tuesday that Duguay was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that “started in the colon.” The diagnosis was presented about a year ago, per the outlet.
Us Weekly has reached out to Duguay for comment.
Thomas offered further insight into the family’s recent experiences via the post’s caption. “Update on my dad @ronduguay10. One of the hardest things we’ve learned through this journey is that cancer doesn’t fight fair. Just when you think you’ve found something that’s working, just when hope starts to grow again, it tries to show up somewhere else. It forces you to keep pivoting, keep adjusting treatments, and keep changing cocktails and protocols,” the mom-of-three wrote.
Ron Duguay and Sarah Palin Courtesy of Shay Thomas/Instagram
“Cancer wears on you mentally, emotionally, and physically. The highs bring hope, the lows can feel overwhelming. But through all of it, my dad keeps showing up. And more than anything, he keeps leaning on God.”
Thomas, whose GoFundMe target of $50,000 had soared past the halfway point (approximately $28,400) at the time of publication, then detailed the various treatments her father had undertaken in the hope of attacking cancerous cells.
“He is doing everything he possibly can … from living antioxidant water, blood ozone therapy, IV vitamin drips, ivermectin, methylene blue, and countless holistic approaches, while also continuing [Californian hospital] City of Hope’s chemo protocol and undergoing major surgery on both his liver and colon,” she detailed. “He is all in. Every single day. And through it all, his faith has never wavered.”
Palin has mostly kept her romance with Duguay away from the public eye, however the pair have attended public events together in the past, including the “Save America” rally in Anchorage, Alaska, in July 2022. The New York Post also published photos of the pair linking arms while attending a Rangers game in New York City in April 2025.
Palin, who divorced Todd Palin in 2020 after more than three decades of marriage, told the Post in 2022 that her relationship with Duguay was “safe and comfortable.”
While addressing her 2017 defamation lawsuit against The New York Times — which alleged that the NYT incorrectly linked her political committee to a 2011 mass shooting (the lawsuit was dismissed in 2022 and an appeal also found the NYT not liable in 2025) — Palin told the Post that Duguay served as a healthy distraction throughout the ordeal.
“Ron is the first person that I’ve ever even talked to about a lot of this personal stuff. So it’s been helpful and refreshing to have Ron to talk to about not just politics, because he’s got more common sense in his little finger than the collective in D.C., but just about life,” she said before adding that her boyfriend was “really handsome.”
