‘A mighty prophet’: President Nelson’s family, friends, colleagues provide inside look at a 100-year-old father, prophet

Marsha Nelson Workman expects her father, President Russell M. Nelson , will be excited for his 100th birthday.

“He’s a numbers guy,” said Workman, the oldest of President Nelson’s 10 children. “I think to achieve a goal like that — although I’ve never heard him say that’s a goal — now that it’s here at the doorstep, I would imagine he’s pretty excited about that.

“And for us, it’s just nothing short of a miracle. We’re just grateful for every day that we can be led by him, or know that he’s downtown, doing the work, and it just is a comfort to us to know he’s still here.”

His children and grandchildren and the leaders and colleagues who have spent time with him in councils and accompanied him on global ministry trips recently shared their insights about the 17th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They talked about what he means to the world, the church and his family as he becomes a centenarian on Monday. They shared inside looks at his personal touch, his optimism, how he honors and respects women, his leadership, how he receives revelation as a prophet and his love for a family that now includes 235 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

They also talked about his sense of humor.

“I’ve heard him say that every morning he wakes up, he figures out which side of the veil he’s on, figures out that he’s on this side, so he puts his suit on and goes to work,” said a grandson, Nathan McKellar. “He knows there’s work waiting for him on the other side as well, but as long as he’s here, he’s going to continue to do what he can to build the kingdom of God.”

When President Nelson became the church president at age 93 in 2018 — when he was still skiing regularly — his only son, Russell Nelson Jr., noticed increased vigor and capacity.

“I would say that his energy and his excitement for the gospel and the ongoing Restoration has been accelerated,” Russell Nelson Jr. said. “It’s been more evident in his life and in his urgency of everything that he is dealing with. It has become the priority in his life.

“He promised in his first press conference from the temple that he would serve till his dying breath, and he’s doing it.”

How does President Nelson see his role as a prophet?

In collaboration with Deseret News, KSL interviewed a dozen people close to President Nelson. Several of them shared how he follows inspiration, receives revelation and sees his role as a prophet to the world.

“He is utterly unselfish, and he wants people to be focused on the Savior, Jesus Christ, not on him,” Richard E. “Rick” Turley Jr., former Assistant Church Historian and former managing director of what then was the church’s Public Affairs Department, said on the Church News podcast .

President Nelson’s tenure as church president has been marked by more than 100 noteworthy announcements and changes for the church. They were immediately noticeable. On the second day of the church’s first international general conference after President Nelson became the prophet, another church leader said he wasn’t sure how many more rushes of revelation the church could handle.

Ellen Irion talked about her grandfather-in-law’s reaction when people compliment him on the adjustments and updates he’s announced.

“I love that he just says, ‘Well, I’m good at taking instruction.’ I just love his humility and connection to God,” she said.

“He deflected that praise and put it where it belongs,” said his daughter, Gloria Nelson Irion.

Gloria Irion said she knew President Nelson received heavenly guidance and direction throughout her life, but that it “seemed like the conduit opened wider, and he was getting it fast and furious and still is,” since he became church president. She asked him recently how he prepares his conference messages.

“Well, he makes me work for him,” President Nelson said of God.

His daughter said President Nelson reported that he will write a talk and then receive inspired revisions, however large or small, in the wee hours.

“He has said recently that inspiration follows good information,” said Turley, the historian, “and I think that he has demonstrated that in his life. He has sought to get inspiration by first studying things out in his mind and asking others for help in doing so.”

One way he studies a topic is by listening to counsel, said President Camille Johnson Relief Society general president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Like every good leader, he listens first, and it’s been my observation that he always turns to those around the table, and particularly his dear counselors, President Dallin H. Oaks and President Henry B. Eyring, and seeks their input before he offers his opinion and declares his prophetic voice,” she said. “You can absolutely feel prophetic direction coming in a council, where a matter has been discussed, he’s heard the wisdom of his two counselors sitting on either side of him, and then it comes, and it really is almost like a rush of wind. You can feel it. It fills up the whole room. This is prophetic direction. It’s remarkable.”

President Johnson and Turley noted that President Nelson has taught the church that revelation is personal, too.

“He’s also strongly advocated having church members receive personal revelation to guide their own lives,” Turley said. “In other words, he said, this is not something limited just to the president of the church, it’s a gift that all church members can have within the sphere of their responsibilities.”

“I can have that rush, that exhilaration,” President Johnson said. “I can have the Spirit speak to me in that same way when I listen to his words and when I study his words. That experience does not have to be unique to me. It can be an experience that all of us have when we explore, prayerfully and inviting the Spirit into that exploration, the words of a mighty prophet.”

How does President Nelson champion women?

President Johnson talked at length about how President Nelson shows respect for women and sees them as uniquely qualified and necessary in the church.

Another granddaughter-in-law, Emily McKellar, talked about that same respect.

“As a woman, I appreciate his perspective on females and women in the church,” she said. “It’s been such a strength. I know all of our church leaders respect women, but he has such a front row seat having nine daughters, and they’re all wonderful women, and also his daughter-in-law. I just love the confidence that he has in us and that he helps us feel in ourselves to take part in the great work of the gospel, that we’re not second-class citizens, that we have a strength that nobody else can offer. I appreciate that.”

President Nelson called President Johnson to be the Relief Society general president in 2022, and she has sat on some of the church’s highest councils since then.

“I feel so blessed to serve at this time when President Nelson is our prophet and the Lord’s mouthpiece on the earth, because he is uniquely qualified to address the needs of the sisters of this church,” she said. “I don’t think it’s by accident that he raised nine daughters with his beautiful wife, Dantzel, and now he has his loving companion, Wendy, by his side, and he understands the needs of our sisters.”

President Johnson asked for his counsel on talking to the women of the church.

“Please tell them that they’re loved,” he told her. “Please tell them that they’re precious and that they are necessary.”

“I feel that when I’m with him,” President Johnson said. “He loves the sisters. He’s concerned for the sisters. They’re precious in his eyes. He knows they’re precious in the eyes of our Heavenly Father, (that they’re) covenant women, daughters of Heavenly Father and necessary. Oh, he’s made that clear to us.”

In a 2019 general conference talk , President Nelson said, “When a man understands the majesty and power of a righteous, seeking, endowed Latter-day Saint woman, is it any wonder that he feels like standing when she enters the room?”

President Johnson said that when she makes a presentation with the Presiding Bishopric and President Nelson and his counselors are sitting when she enters, they stand.

In that same 2019 talk, President Nelson said he thought of every woman and girl in the church as part of his family .

“I just love him so much,” President Johnson said. “I’ve said to his daughters, ‘Thank you so much for sharing your dad with us, because he makes us feel like we’re one of his (daughters).’”

Workman, President Nelson’s oldest child, remembered a statement her father made to his nine daughters after he became the church president about his eternal role in their family.

“Girls, prophets come and prophets go, but I will be your daddy forever,” he said.

“We still feel that,” Workman said. “That meant a lot to me.”

The historian who traveled the world with President Nelson

President Nelson was one of Turley’s advisors when he was the managing director of the Family History Department as it developed and launched FamilySearch, a genealogy website that makes it possible for church members to find ancestors and do temple work for them. President Nelson and Turley announced the new tool in 1999 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

“The next day, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million hits,” Turley said.

FamilySearch’s development is tied directly to the intense pace President Nelson has set for temple-building, which is making it possible for more members to do temple work closer to home than in the past.

“If we didn’t have FamilySearch to provide the names, we wouldn’t be able to operate the temples that have been announced,” Turley said. “So he not only has built temples, but he’s also laid the foundation for the work that’s being done in the temples.”

Turley has traveled the world with President Nelson on ministry trips, and the prophet has commissioned him to write an upcoming biography of Joseph Smith . The historian said President Nelson is a lifelong active learner and early adopter of technology. For example, his parents were not actively involved in the church, so a young Russell Nelson “used his own initiative to learn about the church,” Turley said.

President Nelson overhauled the church’s worship schedule and curriculum. Latter-day Saints now attend a two-hour block of services on Sunday instead of three, and the focus has shifted to home-centered and church-supported gospel learning.

Turley said that in an age when people consume information passively on screens, “President Nelson has advocated learning on our own,” providing the new “Come, Follow Me,” curriculum and other products “that make it possible for church members to advance at their own pace.”

The historian sees that as an extension of President Nelson’s lifelong thirst for education, which includes earning both an M.D. that allowed him to serve as a world-renowned practitioner of open-heart surgery, and a Ph.D. that was part of a research career in which he published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.

“He’s taught us that it is not wrong to ask questions,” Turley said. “In fact, that questions can lead to revelation and to our growth and development. He’s not only taught that, but he’s lived that same principle.”

His background earned him respect and reach beyond the membership of the church, Turley said.

“There are people who have known him, who still remember him, and who listen to his messages, who are not members of the church,” he said.

Nelson family birthdays still Zoom-ing along

President Nelson’s family has blossomed to:

• 10 children
• 57 grand children
• 167 great-grand children (as of next week)
• 1 great-great-grandchild

He mails a birthday card to every one of them each year, said Gloria Nelson Irion. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he held a big monthly family function and the man with perfect pitch sang or whistled “Happy Birthday” to everyone who had a birthday.

Russell Irion, grandson : “Sometimes that “Happy Birthday” song got long with so many people. He’s just so busy, but he always made time for family, and that hasn’t changed.”

The family ended the monthly in-person gatherings to protect those getting older from COVID-19, but they continue remotely.

Laurie Marsh, daughter : “His favorite friend these days is Zoom, because he can see everybody wherever they are. Missionaries can join in when we have our family Zoom gatherings. We don’t spend as much physical time with him like we used to, but he assures us that we’re his and we’re grateful for that knowledge.”

Ellen Irion, granddaughter-in-law : “He takes so much joy in his family, even just this last Father’s Day for a big Zoom call, and it was so fun to watch his little video screen as he’s just adoring every little screen and his little comments of, ‘Oh, beautiful!’ He takes joy in his family.”

Russell Irion, grandson : I hope it energizes him. You know, he’s got a lot of things that are probably tough to deal with, especially when you’re 99 years old ... I feel like his time with the family helps energize him.”

Marsha Workman, daughter : “When we are with him, that daddy heart is still there, and it buoys him up. He seems to be energized when he’s with his family, but yet he is so engaged and really empowered by the Lord to carry on beyond what the family does.”

Laurie Marsh : “The next generation and the generation after that still ask for a family reunion in July at our home in Midway, and we try to do one at Christmas, too. We’re too big of a group for a home, but we can do a church, and so when we get together, they’re all really, really happy to be together and happy to share memories and just friendship and love.”

Childhood memories that provide more insight into President Nelson

Gloria Irion, daughter : “When we were younger, he took us fishing a few times, which I think would be insane, but he pretty much spent his whole time untying lines and untangling lines. He always tries to take advantage of teaching moments, too, so when we were cleaning the fish in the kitchen sink after the trip, he wanted to teach me about the anatomy of the eye. So he slit an eyeball and poked out the lens. I just thought that was the coolest thing, this clear orb that you could see through. I said, ‘I need to make mother a necklace out of this.’ So we slit all the eyeballs and popped out all those lenses, and I made the smelliest brace necklace that we kept in the fridge for a little while because he just wanted to teach me about that anatomy.”

Marsha Workman, daughter : Having captive children in a car on a road trip for a family vacation was an interesting experience. We learned a lot. We learned lots of Dr. Seuss songs and had things that we listened to and games that we played, but we also learned the Latin origin of words and prefixes and suffixes and how our words in English came to be what they are today based on their Latin roots. He was always expanding our horizon. ... What I see today is just the expansion of that to reach a greater audience, a wider audience, with more love and more urgency and more encouragement.”

Nathan McKellar, grandson : “I’m in a little bit of a unique situation in that I’m the oldest grandchild and I’m the same age as his youngest child, and we grew up about a mile away. So there were many days when I was under his watchful eye, almost as a son, in some regards. He and my grandmother have always been able to make me feel like I was the most important person in the world. I have a hunch, if you asked every one of my cousins, they would tell you that they’re his favorite, just like I’m his favorite.”

Laurie Marsh, daughter : “When I was 18 or 19, it was my turn to go on a trip with him with my little sister. We went to Mexico, and it was a wonderful experience. I think he must have been general president of the Sunday School at the time ... I can remember going to church in someone’s home, and when we came back to the hotel, Daddy said, ‘So what did you think?’ And I said, ‘This has just been a great experience, and all these members of the church are so strong, and it’s just so wonderful to be with them, but I’m not over going to church in a home. What is up with that? I just had never experienced that; it had never entered my mind. He said, ‘Oh, Laurie, you’re gonna live to see the day where it is a home-centered church and a church-supported (home). You’re going to live to see that.’ And here I am, all these years later, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re teaching the gospel in our homes, and the church is supporting that.”

Russell Nelson Jr., son : “One of the memories that I remember the most from being young is that he always taught that the church is more than the building down the street. The church is not a set of rules. It’s who we are and how we become more like Christ, how we serve others. To see that being taught, honestly in a similar way that I was taught as a child, that’s been kind of neat.”

Making family a priority

Ellen Irion, granddaughter-in-law : “When we had our first baby, and we lived in Las Vegas, he obviously didn’t come visit us in the hospital, but he had an assignment in Las Vegas five or six weeks later, and he made a point to make sure that we could spend time with him, and he wanted to meet and snuggle our baby.”

Laurie Marsh, daughter : “I just think he is amazing. What to me or maybe another normal person would be a stumbling block becomes a stepping stone for him. It’s an opportunity to learn or grow or do things in a different way, or pray harder to get what the Lord wants you to do. He’s just clearly so optimistic and focused on the Savior. That’s probably my takeaway from daddy is that the answer is always in the life and in the teachings of Jesus Christ. As long as we can look to him for that source, everything is going to be taken care of. Daddy acknowledges the miracles all the time. My husband and I lived away [when] the first four of our children were born, but for the last two, we lived in Utah, so my parents came to see us when our fifth child was born, and they both just held that baby and wept over just what a gift this is from Heavenly Father. Some people think that’s just something that happens every day, but not to my parents. It’s a miracle, and it’s a gift from Heavenly Father, and they acknowledged him right away. That is my most precious lesson that I’ve learned from my parents, is to love the Lord, put him first and watch miracles happen.”

Gloria Irion : “He loves us and would do anything that he could for us if we were in need.”

Nathan : “I attended a medical school where at our graduation ceremony, if we had a family member who was a physician, they could come to the commencement and do the hooding ceremony for us. I sent him an email a couple of months before and said, ‘I don’t expect you to be able to do that,’ but he rearranged his schedule. He and grandmother flew out to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a five-second hooding ceremony. I remember sitting in this huge auditorium thinking, ‘I bet no one here has any idea that the man who’s hooding me is a world-famous pioneer in cardiothoracic surgery.’ I felt like a million dollars. Not only did he change his schedule, but he arranged other church assignments in the area. We were living in the Kirtland Stake, and he met with some of the church historians, provided a nice fireside for our friends and our colleagues, and I just thought that example of ministry multitasking is another lesson that I’ve learned from my grandfather, but that family comes first.”

Emily McKellar, Nathan’s wife, and mother of President Nelson’s only great-great-grandchild : “The first time that I met President Nelson, it was at their family home in Midway. I was nervous and kind of scared thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to meet this person that I’ve only seen on TV.’ I remember the first moment I saw him. He was in the kitchen swatting flies, and he was wearing a plaid shirt and just trying to keep the place nice and welcoming everyone. ... He was just so happy to be gathering with everybody in the family. As each person would come in, he would greet them with a hug and a kiss and by name. It’s absolutely amazing how he can remember all of those names, not just of family members but people that he’s met just once or twice in his life, just to make them each feel so, so seen and so important, I think, is such a gift. He just welcomed me right into the family. I was just part of the family right away. I just really love that.”

Ellen Irion : “He’s so good at making each person feel seen and important. Even just recently, we’ve been chatting with a lot of (my husband’s) cousins, all the girls, and they’re all talking about individual experiences or little things that he would do every time they said hello, and that just make each person feel special. And he always uses your name and you don’t just feel like one in the crowd. ... He makes each person just feel like they matter, and you can feel his love. It’s like such a great quality to try and emulate.”

‘And to me, that’s the legacy, and I love that’

Two grandsons and their wives said they appreciated that much of what President Nelson has asked church members to do has felt attainable, manageable. They believe that is one of the great legacies of his tenure.

Russell Irion, grandson: “I think the drum he keeps beating is, it’s all about your covenants and how you honor those and strengthen those, and how it combines families, how it unites the world, it unites Israel so all of us can return back to be with Heavenly Father and Jesus again. I think that’s what people will look back on and say, that’s what he kept preaching and living.”

Emily McKellar, granddaughter-in-law : He is inviting us to take more of a part in the gospel and in this gathering of Israel. I love each of these challenges because they don’t seem like something somebody else has to do, or something that is impossible. These are small changes that we can make each day. You know, by focusing us on repenting daily or improving our personal prayer, it makes me feel like I have ownership, and I have a partnership, and I have a part in this work. It’s not just the full-time missionaries or the leaders of our church, but I’m part of this, and I have liked that about his leadership.”

Ellen Irion : “President Nelson and his first wife, Dantzel, built their family and their life on the scripture, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things will be added to you.’ He has just lived that. To me, that’s the overall legacy, because it’s so obvious that he puts that first. If you put that first, everything else will fall into place. Even when things are not OK, you will be OK because you are with the Lord, seeking to do his work. To me, that’s the legacy, and I love that, because it’s more on a personal level. Each of us can do that. I’m never going to be the president of the church, thank goodness, but I can seek the kingdom of God and seek to do my part.”

Nathan McKellar : “There’s a long string of invitations that we’ve been invited to follow, and I love that he does couch them as an invitation. It’s not a ‘thou shalt.’ We’ve got plenty of thou shalts. He makes it an invitation to us. I would say that the one that has been the most personal for me is his message about letting God prevail in our lives, because we all face challenges. We all have our hurdles to overcome. We all have setbacks and disappointments and bad outcomes and things like that. The message that we can place our trust in the Lord, place our hope in the Lord, use our love and our efforts to grow his work and his kingdom here, that has been the one that I have clung to the most in those difficult times, as well as in the good times.”

The doctor who is the Russell M. Nelson Chair at the University of Utah

Many people still know President Nelson as Dr. Nelson, said Dr. Craig Selzman, a heart surgery professor at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine since 2008.

In fact, Dr. Selzman is the Russell M. Nelson and Dantzel W. Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair in Cardiothoracic Surgery .

“For those of us in the medical profession, and particularly in heart surgery, he means something that’s just a little bit different,” Dr. Selzman said. “He’s such a special individual before 1982, in particular for the University of Utah and the state of Utah.”

In 1955, President Nelson performed the first open heart surgery west of the Mississippi River.

The idea of such an audacious procedure was “so bold, so ambitious, so crazy,” Selzman said, that it had been performed previously only in Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

“I think it said a lot about his character,” Dr. Selzman said. “Obviously, it’s in his DNA that he was going to be able to help a patient go through something like that, where they’re literally the first people to ever have something like that done to them.”

President Nelson continued to innovate and operate, but he also turned to training dozens of other surgeons at the university and around the world.

“One of his trainees is one of the premier heart surgeons in Mumbai, India, who we communicate with a couple times a year,” Dr. Selzman said, adding that President Nelson has “‘outlived many of the people that he’s trained at this point, because he stopped in the early 80s, but there’s still people out there who send me notes talking about what it was like to train under Dr. Nelson.”

President Nelson has a photographic memory and is energized when he talks about his medical career, Dr. Selzman said.

President Nelson maintained detailed operation notes. He donated them to the University of Utah library last year.

“There’s so many things that he means to us as cardiac surgeons,” Dr. Selzman said.

In fact, doctors and students receive a pen imprinted with the mission statement for cardiothoracic surgery, which is “To teach, to heal and to discover.” At the bottom of the statement are the initials RMN.

Dr. Selzman said his President Nelson’s initials are there because he represents those three academic pillars as well as “compassion, discipline, commitment, humility — key foundational features that I want all of our faculty, all of our members of our division, our teams, to recognize.”

“It’s aspirational for us,” he said, adding that President Nelson’s “kind of with me all the time, and with us. All of us walk around with something like this on us.”

What lessons has President Johnson learned from President Nelson?

President Johnson said her experience in more than two years serving with President Nelson is that he is gracious, kind and genuine. She also said he instills confidence in her and others around him.

“He’s outward-facing. He’s a prophet to the world,” she said. “Yet, when you’re with him, he makes you feel like you’re the most important person there. When he looks into your eyes, it’s with all sincerity and graciousness that he addresses you, that he communicates his love and his confidence in you.”

She has immersed herself in his teachings. She has studied all 112 of his general conference talks by listening to them 10 minutes a day.

“I’ve had the opportunity to look into the eyes of our prophet, who I know to be the Lord’s mouthpiece on the earth today, and feel the love of my Savior through him. What I wish for all of my sisters around the world is to have an experience feeling the love of our Savior through the words of our prophet,” she said.

President Johnson said she is more joyful and optimistic and more firmly resolved on the covenant path because President Nelson is.

“I think celestial. I think I’m a better peacemaker. When I listen to President Nelson’s words each morning, it stills me for the challenges of the day,” she said. “And so I invite my brothers and sisters, and friends of all faiths, to listen to President Nelson, to study his words. I trust that as you do, you will feel the love of our Savior Jesus Christ. It is clearly one of his primary roles as our prophet to invite the Savior, Jesus Christ, into our lives as he witnesses of his reality.”