We all love a relationship’s origin story, but we’ve been told it’s better than not to avoid workplace relationships, especially with your boss. Somehow, though, Jimmy Kimmel’s wife and her talk-show host husband have been able to make it work. She was the only female writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! when they met—and they were dating other people at the time.
Molly McNearney and Kimmel have been working together since around 2004 when she started on his show as an assistant producer. She was the only female writer on the show at the time. “When I first met him, he insulted me,” McNearney recalled of their first encounter during an interview with Glamour in 2014. “The executive producer brought me into his office and said, ‘This is Molly; she’s my new assistant.’ Jimmy barely looked up from his desk until my EP said, ‘She competes in triathlons,’ and then Jimmy looked up at me and said, ‘That is really stupid! What a waste of time.’ That was the first and only thing he probably said to me the entire first year of working there.”
Who is Jimmy Kimmel’s wife?
Who is Jimmy Kimmel’s wife? Jimmy Kimmel has been married to Molly McNearney since 2013. From EP to executive producer and co-head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, McNearney has forged a successful path in entertainment, winning three Prime Time Emmy awards while being nominated for 12. She also produced the Oscars that her husband hosted on March 12, 2023. McNearney has also dabbled in acting, appearing in such films as Fun Mom Dinner and the Jennifer Aniston film Dumplin’, where she played a former teen pageant queen named Delia Shepherd.
Jimmy Kimmel, Molly McNearney. Getty Images
As mentioned, Kimmel and McNearney met when they began working together but they were in relationships with other people (Kimmel had been linked to comedian Sarah Silverman for a time). In the interview for Glamour, McNearney says she had no idea this was the man she’d eventually marry. “Jimmy gets a little insulted when I say this, but I never once thought of him that way or looked at him that way. I really didn’t. I had worked for him for so long, and I was in a relationship and he was in a relationship, so it never occurred to me. And that’s workplace 101. You don’t date your boss,” she said.
Their relationship turned romantic in 2010 when all the writers would hang out after the show. McNearney remembers liking Kimmel “as friends” and when he cooked for her, that “sealed the deal” in her words. But she was worried their romance would impact how she was perceived by her colleagues. “I was very, very nervous because I love our writers so much, and we work so closely together. I was also the only female writer in the room at the time, and I didn’t want to change the dynamic. We love to make fun of Jimmy over here, myself included. When you have camaraderie with your coworkers, one of the parts of that is making fun of the boss a little bit, and now to think, That’s the guy I’m dating, I didn’t want that to stop,” she told Glamour. “Thankfully, that did not change. I made a conscious effort to stay the same.”
In 2012, Kimmel proposed while the couple was vacationing at South Africa’s Kruger National Park. They were married a year later in 2013 and Jennifer Aniston was one of her guests. “I know I have a pretty crazy, strange life, but I will say, [celebrities] are just people. You take all the fame stuff away, and they are just really wonderful friends and human beings,” she told Glamour. “I think that my 1996 self would have been excited about that, but after being in this business for so long, you just don’t see people as celebrities; you see them as people. Some are good people. Others are not.”
In an article published by Entertainment Weekly in March 2015, McNearney spoke of how thoughtful her partner had been before they moved in together. “When we started dating, I would go back and forth between my place and his,” she revealed. “I have my stuff at my house, and I like my own space. One time, he was in the bathroom for a very long time, and I just figured something was going on internally.” She continued: “A few days later, he presented me with this big box that had two of everything in my makeup and Dopp kit, because he saw that I was lugging stuff back and forth, and he wanted me to be comfortable in his home. He was in the bathroom for that hour and a half with my bag going through every single thing: every lotion, razor, deodorant, shampoo, makeup… He really is the greatest wife you could ask for.”
Jimmy Kimmel, Molly McNearney, Sarah Silverman. Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage
McNearney has made appearances on Kimmel’s talk show over the years. In November 2022 during the Trump/Biden presidential campaigns, McNearney took over the classic monologue to call attention to women’s reproductive rights and the anti-abortion rhetoric that’s commonplace in the Republican party. “Tomorrow is election day, and abortion rights are gone or endangered in 26 states, even though the majority of people in this country support a woman’s right to choose.” After a round of applause, McNearney continued, opting for facts over banter and jokes. “92 percent of abortions happen in the first 13 weeks,” she stated. “Roughly half the women who have abortions live below the poverty line.”
She continued: “The only person who should be making a life-altering, potentially life-saving decision for a woman and her body is the woman herself. I’m not here with this dumb alarm asking you guys to love abortion,” McNearney said. “I’m asking you to love women enough to trust women enough to make their own difficult decisions and to vote for the people who will make that happen tomorrow. Our daughters should not have to fight the battles that our grandmothers won.”
Kimmel and McNearny have two children together—daughter Jane and son William “Billy” John. McNearney is Kimmel’s second wife, having been married to costume designer Gina Maddy in 1988. They had two children together: daughter Katherine born in 1991 and son Kevin born in 1993. After 14 years of marriage, the couple divorced in 2003. They shared joint custody of their children and have maintained an amicable relationship.
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