John Mellencamp said he’s hoping to convince his daughter Teddi Mellencamp to move back to their home state of Indiana with her children as she is treated for Stage 4 cancer.
The legendary singer and songwriter shared a health update on his 44-year-old reality TV star daughter, who was diagnosed in October 2022 with Stage 2 melanoma that later spread to her lungs and brain. John Mellencamp said on TODAY that he’s looking to have Teddi Mellencamp and her three children move from her home in Los Angeles to the Hoosier State.
“I’ve tried to talk her into moving back home,” John Mellencamp, 74, told Craig Melvin, Al Roker and Dylan Dreyer on Jan. 16. “I said, ‘Move back to Indiana, bring the kids and just come back and live in Indiana,’ but she won’t do it.”
Her father also gave an update on how she’s been faring in recent months.
“Suffering,” he said. “You can’t say you’re cancer-free with the type of cancer she’s got for three years. So she has lesions in her brain, it went from her back, just a little, teeny spot on her. Over the last couple years it grew, and it got inside her brain and her lungs.”
John Mellencamp said Teddi “has good days” and “feels good” until she undergoes immunotherapy treatment, and then “she feels like hell for about four days” before “feeling normal again.”
Teddi Mellencamp, a former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star, said in October 2025 on her “Two T’s in a Pod” podcast that doctors found “no detectable cancer” after she underwent immunotherapy treatment and scans.
She added that she needs to continue immunotherapy treatments for at least another year
“And I am not considered in remission or anything like that,” she said.
“The way (doctors) said it works, it’s like one year, then two years, then at three years, you’re allowed to be considered in remission,” she said later in the podcast.
Teddi Mellencamp, who shares children Slate, 13, Cruz, 11, and Dove, 5, with ex Edwin Arroyave, began documenting her cancer journey in March 2022 after having a mole removed from her back. Several months later, she underwent surgery after receiving a Stage 2 melanoma diagnosis.
In February 2025, she underwent emergency surgery after the cancer spread to her brain. She then revealed in March 2025 that the cancer had also spread to her lungs.
In April, Teddi Mellencamp provided the positive update that the tumors in her brain had “significantly shrunk,” which doctors considered a sign that her treatment was effective.
