You took my mother.” What Steve Harvey’s stepson said next had the whole room in tears. 
Steve Harvey grew up in West Virginia, the son of a coal miner, and worked as a mailman, a carpet cleaner, and even a boxer to fund his comedy dream. After his first divorce, he sent most of his stand-up paychecks home to his kids, and when a few gigs fell through, he found himself with nowhere to go. He lived in his car for three years.
“One or two gigs fell through, and suddenly I was homeless… I had nowhere to go… It was so disheartening… A week is really the maximum you can do. This was three years!” Harvey told People.
He worked his way to the top, and in 2007 he married Marjorie Bridges. Through that marriage, he went from being a dad of four to a dad of seven, adopting Marjorie’s children as his own. Stepping into an extended family can’t have been easy. But for his birthday, his show surprised him with a special tribute, and each of his seven children shared their favorite memory of their dad.
It was his stepson Jason who broke him.
“You took my mother. But you gained a whole lot more with that. You gave me your last name, and that’s the unthinkable. My father did what he could, but he wasn’t there. And you stepped in and you gave me that,” Jason said.
Harvey held his head in his hands and wiped away tears as Jason finished.
“If only you knew the true amount of love that I have for you. I need for you to know that now. It don’t get no better than you, Dad. You it,” Jason said.
Marjorie added her own words, thanking him for the way he loved her children as if they were his own.
“I appreciate how you love me, how you loved my children as though they were yours, how you treat my parents as though they were your parents,” Marjorie said.
When it was his turn, Steve could barely get the words out.
“I got four full-time jobs for them. So that when I am done, I want you all to just remember that somebody cared more about you than himself,” Harvey said.
Now 69 and married to Marjorie for 19 years, the man who once had nothing but a car and a dream has built a family that looks at him and says, “You it.”
