Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells us about Ernie Johnson’s life away from the studio and broadcast booth. It is quite a story.

Caesar writes:

But you probably don’t really know Ernie Johnson.

While Johnson, 57, has a very public career at which he has become a major success, his biggest accomplishments come in his home in suburban Atlanta, not far from the Turner studios. That’s where he and his wife deal with a very difficult situation, one that would divide many families. Ernie and Cheryl Johnson’s adult son, whom they adopted as a refugee from Eastern Europe when he was a young boy, lives with them and is on life support — as he has been for two long years.

“He’s on a ventilator with a ‘trake’ (tracheostomy tube),” Johnson says. “We’ve all become very good nurses, everybody in the family. We know how to suction his lungs. He has overnight nursing, but during the day it’s me or my wife or my oldest daughter if she’s got a day off.”

And more:

Michael continues along a tough road. And while his setback of 2011 might have zapped him physically, it didn’t quell his spirit.

“I’ve seen in two years how he’s the same guy, it just takes us a lot longer to do things,” Johnson says. “If we want to go somewhere, we get him up in the morning. It takes a while, because we’ve basically got our own intensive care unit in his bedroom. But we’re able to put the ventilator on his wheelchair; he’s able to drive his wheelchair. We try to do the same things we did before; it’s just without that machine we couldn’t.

“His spirits are always good. What’s crazy too is that he’s a special needs kid and doesn’t have a massive vocabulary but has the most loving spirit.”

Faith plays a major role in the Johnsons’ lives, and the joy of having young Michael in the house led them to adopt a healthy 7-month-old girl, Carmen, from Paraguay in 1993. Then in 2011, the same year Michael’s big challenge arose, the Johnsons brought in two girls — Allison (now 13) and Ashley (now 12). They had been in foster care in Cleveland.

“They had five or six homes growing up, we adopted them and said, ‘Here’s your forever place,” Johnson says.

And finally:

Johnson might have been caught up in that self-absorbing world at one time but no more.

“Sometimes early in my career I thought what I did was who I was,” Johnson says. “As you mature, I’ve learned that is not the case. This is what I do, this is not who I am.”

As Kiely can attest:

“He’s a wonderful human being.” Kiely simply says.

Amen to that.