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- Dick Cheney served as Vice President (2001–2009) and previously as Secretary of Defense and White House Chief of Staff.
- The family announced he died at 84 from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
- Cheney endured lifelong cardiovascular disease, received a 2012 heart transplant, and remained active in retirement.
Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has died, his family revealed Tuesday. He was 84.
Cheney served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under Republican President George W. Bush.
He also served as secretary of defense under Republican George Bush Sr, between 1989 and 1993.
Vice President Dick Cheney delivers a speech at a Bush Cheney 2004 fundraising lunch in New York. (Photo by Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)
Before that, Cheney acted as Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff in the 1970s, previously spending a decade in the House of Representatives.
A statement released by the family announced Dick Cheney’s death:
Richard B. Cheney, the 46th Vice President of the United States, died last night, November 3, 2025. He was 84 years old.
His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed.
The former vice president died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States.
Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honour, love, kindness, and fly fishing.
We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.
Cheney served as the U.S. representative for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989, and as the 17th United States Secretary of Defense in the administration of President George H. W. Bush.
CNN notes Cheney was plagued by cardiovascular disease for most of his adult life, surviving a series of heart attacks.
File/Former Vice President Dick Cheney makes a joke about what it takes to be a great vice president while talking to moderator Hugh Hewitt at The Event Center at Colorado Christian on December 7, 2015 in Lakewood, Colorado. (Brent Lewis/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Despite his health travails he went on to lead a full, vigorous life and lived many years in retirement after a heart transplant in 2012 he hailed in a 2014 interview as “the gift of life itself.”
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.
He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964.
He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.
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