John Mellencamp says life’s been rough for his daughter Teddi.
“I do have a daughter that’s really sick,” the rocker said on Wednesday’s edition of The Joe Rogan Experience. “It’s not f—ing fun. She’s got cancer in the brain. And she’s suffering right now.”
Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave, 44, revealed that she’d been diagnosed with skin cancer in 2022. After having more than a dozen surgeries over the next few years, she explained in February 2025 that she’d also been diagnosed with brain cancer. By March, she said that she also had tumors in her lungs.
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
“These are all metastases of my melanoma,” she wrote on social media. “The doctors are hopeful that immunotherapy will effectively treat them.”
Teddi, a former cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills from 2017 to 2020 and has made later appearances on the Bravo series, regularly offers updates to her fans.
The news was good in October.
“Just to give a little life update to you guys,” she said while cohosting her Two T’s in a Pod podcast. “I had my immunotherapy yesterday, and I did my scans, and, at this point, there is no detectable cancer. When they told me, I was in such shock. I was, like, numb.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Mellencamp Arroyave’s rep.
The “Jack & Diane” singer is the father of five adult children in all. Teddi’s mom is his ex-wife Victoria Granucci, who’s also mom to daughter Justice. He shares daughter Michelle with ex-wife Priscilla Esterline. Sons Hud and Speck were from his marriage to Elaine Irwin, which ended in 2011.
In the case of Teddi, both father and daughter have said that their relationship has sometimes been difficult, she’s said he’s been supportive during her health struggle.
Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty
She said on her podcast in August that he’s very much in her life.
“I saw him on the Fourth of July,” she said. “I talk to him on the phone every single day. If I miss his call, he sends a follow-up text like I didn’t see the missed call, like, ‘Hey!'”
She said that flying was a lot for her at the time, so they hadn’t seen in each other in person lately, but “my dad is very much there.”
She expected to see him soon.