I'm not sure if Steve's dad is still alive or not, but I do remember seeing him on the show once. Steve's mom died in 2000, and his father was still around then. He handled crocs and snakes for a lot longer than Steve ever did, and he was well into his 70s when I saw him on the show... so that's why I bristle a bit when people say of Steve, "well, he wasn't going to die young, that's for sure."
It's a much less conscious way of saying "I told you so" for all the times we watched him do what we considered to be crazy antics, and we're yelling at the TV that he's gonna get himself hurt. Steve understood and appreciated more about wildlife than most of us could ever hope to learn.