By Joe Sommerlad

Copyright independent

Charlie Kirk, the MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder who was shot dead on September 10, is survived by his wife Erika and two young children.

Kirk, 31, was speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem when he was shot in the neck by a sniper positioned on a nearby rooftop. He was rushed to the hospital but died shortly afterwards.

Police later arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah, in connection with the killing. Robinson, who prosecutors say confessed to the shooting in a text message with his roommate, has been charged with murder and could face the death penalty.

President Donald Trump is one of numerous conservative figures to pay tribute to the late Kirk, a hugely influential voice on the right.

“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote on social media after the shooting.

He has since announced he will award the slain activist a posthumous Medal of Freedom.

Others have criticized the right’s response to his death, including Jimmy Kimmel, whose show was pulled from the air after the comedian argued conservatives were using the activist’s slaying to score political points.

Kirk was born in Chicago’s Arlington Heights section on October 14, 1993, and raised in nearby Prospect Heights, the son of architect Robert W. Kirk, who was involved in the construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan. His mother was a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who later worked as a mental health counselor.

Amid his rapid rise in popularity in right-wing political circles, Kirk began dating fellow evangelical Christian Erika Lane Frantzve, 36, winner of the 2012 Miss Arizona USA pageant and a political science graduate from Arizona State University, after meeting her in New York City in 2018. They became engaged the following December and were married in May 2021 in her native Scottsdale.

On September 18, she was announced as the next CEO and board chair of Turning Point USA, the organization her husbanded founded in 2012.

“We will carry on,” Turning Point leadership wrote in a letter made public on X, announcing the unanimously approved change. “The attempt to destroy Charlie’s work will become our chance to make it more powerful and enduring than ever before.”

The organization added that Erika Kirk serving as CEO and chair of the board was what Charlie Kirk had wanted in the event of his death.

“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea,” Kirk said during a recent memorial broadcast on her husband’s show. “You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country.”

The group has reportedly been deluged with thousands of student requests to join in the wake of Kirk’s death, and its Arizona headquarters faced a potential bomb threat this week ahead of Kirk’s planned funeral later this month.

Outside of Turning Point, Erika Kirk is also known for founding Everyday Heroes Like You, a non-profit supporting under-recognized charities, for hosting the Midweek Rise Up podcast, for running the BIBLE365 ministry program, and for PROCLAIM, an accompanying faith-driven clothing brand. According to her official website, Erika Kirk is studying for her doctorate in Biblical studies at Liberty University.

On her LinkedIn page, Kirk says that she is a real estate agent with The Corcoran Group in New York City, although it’s unclear when that profile was last updated.

Prior to the assassination, the Kirks had recently celebrated the seventh anniversary of their first date together. Erika Kirk revealed in a September 2023 Instagram post that she and Kirk went on their first date in New York City in 2018.

“5 years ago today, we sat inside Bills Burgers in NYC deep in conversation and banter over theology, philosophy, and politics, and at the end, you paused, looked at me, and said, ‘I’m going to date you,’” the post reads.

In a 2024 video on Turning Point USA’s YouTube channel, Kirk said that after their “very, very long dinner,” he knew “almost immediately” that Erika Kirk was “the one.”

Charlie Kirk proposed in December 2020, and they wed six months later on May 8, 2021. Their wedding was later described by the bride as being “very intimate,” with no bridesmaids or groomsmen, only close friends and family.

Together, they had two young children: a daughter born in August 2022 and a son born in May 2024. The children could sometimes be seen in the background of social media posts from the Kirks, but the parents kept their names and faces out of the public eye.

This past April, Kirk appeared on an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show where she discussed how the pair approached their relationship.

“Keep your faith, obviously first, and try to identify any fleshy problems that you might be having… You have to continually invest in the confidence in one another, that you’re on the same team,” she said. “You support each other. You love each other. You’re not going to undercut each other. You’re not going to undercut each other.”

Meanwhile, on her Instagram page, Kirk regularly posted about her husband and family life.

“My husband Charlie Kirk is a force. He is bold when the world demands silence, he is fearless where others flinch, and he has taken on the battle of the next generation, changing these hearts and minds,” she said in one video.

The family was reportedly present on the Utah campus when the tragedy unfolded, and it subsequently emerged that Erika had shared a Bible verse about seeking help during difficult times just hours before she lost her husband.

“Psalm 46:1 – God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” her post read.

An Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Charlie Kirk first became interested in politics while studying at Wheeling High School when he volunteered to help Illinois Republican Mark Kirk (no relation) in his successful 2010 run for the U.S. Senate. Unlike many Chicagoans, the teen rejected the rise of local hero Barack Obama and expressed an admiration for Ronald Reagan instead.

As a senior, Kirk spearheaded a campaign to reverse an increase in the price of cookies being sold in the school cafeteria. But he made a much bigger splash soon after when he wrote an article for Breitbart alleging a liberal bias in high school textbooks, which led to an invitation to appear on Fox News to discuss the piece.

After being turned away from West Point and dropping out of Chicago’s Harper College, he found a mentor in Bill Montgomery, 71, a Tea Party-backed legislative candidate and businessman, who encouraged him to commit to full-time conservative activism.

Kirk subsequently founded Turning Point, an organization dedicated to promoting conservative values on campus, beginning his rise to national prominence as the face of young Republicanism in the emerging Trump era, a position he cemented with regular appearances in public, on right-wing media and, eventually, his own podcast.