When Tyler Tisza sat down in a doctor’s office and learned his sperm count was 3.1 million, well below the 15 million threshold considered low, he didn’t know what to do with the information.
- “I was really surprised,” Tisza said. “I just didn’t do anything with it for a while. Do I need to exercise more? Do I need to not be drinking? You start going through this mixed bag of which doctor, what’s going to work and what’s not.”
That moment of uncertainty eventually led the 33-year-old Fort Walton Beach native to a surgeon in Atlanta, a video that’s been viewed more than a million times and, most recently, a seat across from Tamron Hall on her ABC daytime talk show. The episode aired on WFGX 35 earlier this spring.
Tyler and Emma Tisza’s story starts well before any of that, though, in the same community where they both grew up.
Deep local roots
Tyler Tisza is a Choctaw High School graduate whose family is woven into Okaloosa County’s schools. His father coached at Choctaw, and his mother is the principal at Silver Sands. Tisza himself spent time as a teacher in the county before leaving education to become a program manager on Eglin Air Force Base.
His wife, Emma, comes from a military family. Her father retired from Hurlburt Field, where he flew C-130s. She attended St. Mary’s Catholic School from first through eighth grade before going to Choctaw, where Tyler was two grades ahead of her.
“I knew of him. He didn’t know of me,” Emma said.
Years later, they matched online. Their first date was at Panera Bread, and Tyler said they sat there for hours talking about family and life.
“I didn’t want to not see this girl again,” Tyler said.
They married in December 2017 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, where both families had been parishioners for years. Emma now works as a clinical adjunct instructor in the radiography program at Northwest Florida State College and also works at White Wilson.
A pregnancy, then a loss
After getting married, the couple decided to wait a few years before starting a family. In 2023, Emma got pregnant without the couple actively trying.
- “We were super excited,” Emma said. “And then we went for our first ultrasound, and we had a miscarriage, like a missed miscarriage. I was supposed to be 10 weeks, but the baby didn’t progress past eight weeks and there was no heartbeat.”
Tyler said the experience felt surreal. He remembered holding his phone to record the ultrasound and holding Emma’s hand when the nurse left the room to get the doctor. Emma told him that wasn’t a good sign. Tyler told her he was sure everything was fine and that the doctor was just coming in to walk them through things.
“And then everything just kinda happened so quick,” Tyler said.
About a week later, Tyler was at work when Emma called him crying to tell him she had miscarried. He said that as a husband, it was a difficult position to be in.
“You can’t sit there and say everything’s okay, everything’s gonna be all right,” Tyler said. “Truthfully, Emma wants to be a mom. I want to be a dad, but I can’t imagine at the level that Emma feels.”
The couple leaned on each other and sought guidance from the priest who married them. After taking time to grieve and process, they decided to start trying again.
‘So it’s not you, it’s me’
After about a year of trying to conceive, Emma began undergoing testing. Tyler, like many men, assumed the issue wasn’t on his side.
“Everybody says guys are just tons and tons of sperm, you’re good,” Tyler said. “I just figured it’s gotta be her, it’s not me.”
Emma kept encouraging him to get a semen analysis to rule it out. He resisted at first but eventually agreed. The results were startling. His concentration was approximately 3.1 million, a fraction of the 15 million that marks the low end of normal. Motility and morphology were also poor.
- “That’s when it hit me,” Tyler said. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
The couple began searching for a specialist in male fertility and found Dr. Akanksha Mehta, an andrologist at Emory University in Atlanta. Tyler was quickly diagnosed with a significant varicocele, which is a mass of enlarged veins that can impair sperm production. His was graded at the highest level.
“She said it was the biggest that she had seen,” Emma said.
Dr. Mehta recommended a varicocelectomy, a microsurgical procedure to correct blood flow. Tyler had the surgery in November.
Waiting for answers
The recovery was a test of patience. Dr. Mehta told Tyler that the sperm production cycle takes about 90 days and that he should be retested three to four months after the procedure. She also told him the full impact of the surgery might not be apparent for up to 12 months.
When Tyler got his first post-surgery analysis in early March, the results were disheartening. Nothing had changed. Dr. Mehta had warned him that 70% of men see improvement after the surgery, while 30% see no change at all.
He worried he might be in the 30%.
But when the couple traveled back to Atlanta for another round of testing, the news was different. Tyler’s count had jumped from 3.1 million to 13 million.
- “I thought she was just going to tell me it stayed the same, it is what it is,” Tyler said. “It was probably the most positive news that we’ve gotten in a minute.”
Dr. Mehta was cautiously optimistic but noted he was still under the normal threshold. The plan now is to continue monitoring, try to conceive naturally and revisit options like IUI or IVF if needed within six to eight months.
Lifestyle changes by the handful
Tyler has also overhauled much of his daily routine. He stopped drinking alcohol entirely, shifted his workouts to include more cardio and high-intensity training and began taking a long list of supplements including Omega-3s, CoQ10, NAC, selenium and ashwagandha.
“Honestly, it’s 20 supplements a day,” Emma said.
He also started doing cold plunges, switched to loose-fitting boxers and stopped placing his phone between his legs while driving, a habit he said he’d had since he was a teenager.
His newest addition is beet juice every morning, which Emma said does not go down easy.
- “I heard him gag yesterday morning,” she said.
Tyler said the experience opened his eyes to how little information is available for men going through fertility issues. Emma pointed to a book she had on fertility that contained 12 chapters, 11 of which focused on women. The single chapter on men was the only resource in the book addressing what Tyler was going through.
“That whole book, although it’s trying to help, it just only highlights one portion of what guys should be doing,” Tyler said.
From the kitchen to a million views
Tyler began creating content in August after leaving education. He said he needed a hobby and started posting day-in-the-life videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
The night before his surgery in November, he asked Emma if he should talk publicly about his diagnosis. She reminded him that he had been searching for other men sharing their experiences on social media and couldn’t find any. It was always told from the woman’s perspective. She told him to just post it and see what happens.
He posted a video about his varicocele that night. The next day, he posted a day-in-the-life video of the surgery itself. It took off, reaching roughly a million views.
- “Maybe I should talk about this more,” Tyler said. “I don’t want it to be my identity. I don’t want to be the guy who’s infertile. But I wanted to at least let people know that it’s okay to talk about.”
The response from other men and couples surprised him. Three men messaged Tyler to tell him they went and got the varicocelectomy because of his videos. Wives and couples wrote to share their own stories, some saying they had been through the same thing and now had children.
Emma said it was encouraging, though she was initially nervous about how people would react.
“Social media can be brutal,” she said. “But it was really encouraging to see a lot of positive comments and support.”
There was some negativity in the comments. People asked why they didn’t just adopt or make insensitive remarks. But the positive responses far outweighed those, and Emma said they gave her hope.
“Seeing wives that are also going through it, it just reinforces that we made the right decision going up there, getting the surgery, taking the steps that we need to take in order to want to have a family,” Tyler said.
A call from Tamron Hall
It was Tyler’s growing social media presence that caught the attention of the Tamron Hall Show’s production team. A producer reached out through a direct message, and Tyler’s first instinct was that it was a scam. He ignored it. That following Friday, the same person texted him. He asked for an email with more information and eventually got on a Zoom call with a producer. When the Zoom invitation came from Walt Disney Company and ABC, he realized it was legitimate.
After an hour-long conversation, he was invited to New York to tape a segment on taboo health topics affecting men, with a focus on fertility. He flew out the following week.
Tyler said a doctor on the show who was familiar with Dr. Mehta’s work also connected with him backstage and offered to stay in touch.
“At this point now, it’s kind of about educating a little bit too,” Tyler said.
Why men don’t talk about it
Tyler said he believes the silence around male infertility comes from several directions. Men aren’t taught to think about their reproductive health the way women are. It’s not something they discuss with friends or even their fathers. And when the subject does come up, there can be a real sense of shame.
“It makes you feel less of a man, truthfully,” Tyler said. “I would never have thought that I would feel that way if I couldn’t have kids. But when you have the opportunity and you really want this, and then the rug gets pulled out from under you, you want that thing even more, but you’re looking at yourself and saying it’s me.”
He described a spiral of self-doubt that extended beyond fertility into other areas of his life, from his income to his career. He said once that kind of thinking starts, it just branches off.
Emma said the medical system itself contributes to the gap. After her miscarriage, she said the follow-up care was focused entirely on her. No one suggested Tyler get tested.
- “There was never a point where someone turned to Tyler and said he needed to do anything,” Tyler said.
Emma added that she believes semen analysis should be treated more like a routine screening.
“Not every year, but at least once every three years or so,” she said. “It’s not a harmful test.”
Leaning on each other
The couple said the experience has brought them closer together, even as it has tested them.
“I think during this process we’ve connected more on an emotional level,” Emma said. “Before all this, I feel like Tyler never really got emotional.”
Tyler agreed and said the journey has given him a deeper appreciation for his wife.
“There’s no one else I would want to do this with,” he said. “Emma has never once told me I should’ve done this five years ago or asked why I didn’t do something sooner. There’s never been any of that. It’s always been that everything will be okay, and we’re gonna get through this.”
Emma said one of the harder parts of the process has been adjusting the timeline she had always pictured for herself.
“You see everybody else moving forward and you’re…” Emma said, stopping for a moment. “Sometimes that’s what it feels like. Especially when you grow up with a timeline in your mind of when you want these things to happen, and now you’re forced to reevaluate and shift your timeline.”
Tyler said he tries to remind them both that they aren’t racing anyone.
“The timeline is whatever path we’re on. We’re not racing anybody else,” he said. “But still, it’s tough ’cause everybody else is running their race.”
A message to other men
Tyler said the message he left the Tamron Hall audience with is the same one he’d give to anyone reading this story.
“Do it for your wife, do it for your future family. Get tested,” he said. “If your wife is serious about it, take the five minutes and talk to her about it and what her concerns are. The best thing you can do is be proactive.”
Emma echoed that, adding that men don’t have to wait until they’re actively trying to conceive.
- “If you know that you want to have a family one day, even if you’re not married yet, just get a sperm analysis done,” she said.
Tyler said he hopes his platform, whether it’s a TikTok video or a segment on national television, can push at least one person to take that step.
“If I can just be the catalyst or a small part in pushing a guy to go do it, or helping him feel like he’s not alone in this, that’s a win in my book,” he said.
