Early in his relationship with a beautiful woman named LeeAnn, the comedian Bert Kreischer found himself wandering around Los Angeles at sunset, pleading with God. LeeAnn, whom he was quickly falling in love with, had said she wanted to take a break from the relationship for a couple of days—a suggestion that prompted Kreischer to melt down.
He remembers saying, “God, if you just give me this chick, I won’t fuck it up,” Kreischer, whose latest Netflix special, Lucky, focuses on his family life, told me recently. God did give him that chick, and Kreischer held up his end of the bargain. The two have been married since 2003.
When it comes to comics in long-lasting marriages, Kreischer has plenty of company. Despite a calling that can require late nights, constant travel, unstable income, and jokes at the expense of one’s spouse, many of the best-known comedians have marriages whose longevity would make a Sunday-school teacher proud. Jerry Seinfeld has been married since 1999; Jon Stewart since 2000; Tina Fey since 2001; Conan O’Brien since 2002; Adam Sandler since 2003; Ellen DeGeneres since 2008, when California first allowed same-sex marriage. Maya Rudolph is not married, but she’s been with her partner, the director Paul Thomas Anderson, since 2001. Nate Bargatze has made his nearly two-decade union with his wife, Laura, a centerpiece of his comedy. Stephen Colbert, who actually has taught Sunday school, outdoes them all: He’s been married to Evie Colbert since 1993.
I spoke with several long-married comedians, and their secret seems not to be humor or wealth—though those things probably don’t hurt. As the comedians pointed out to me, they are students of human behavior. They pay keen attention to their own quirks and emotions, and to those of others, for a living. And they apply that same perceptiveness to their marriage.
Of course, plenty of comedians have divorced, or have avoided marriage entirely. And comedians themselves don’t necessarily consider their profession ideal for fostering a long-lasting romance. Jim Gaffigan, the stand-up comic and author of Dad Is Fat, who has been married to his wife, Jeannie, since 2003, told me, “Whenever I hear of a comedian marrying a civilian, I’m like, ‘Why would you do that to that person?’”
Among the industry’s marital threats is that stand-up comedy today is more autobiographical than it was a few decades ago, Gaffigan said. During a set, he told me, “people expect to hear something about your life, whether it’s fictionalized or exaggerated.” That can include jokes about the comedians’ marriages—the kind of ragging that most people probably wouldn’t accept from their spouse in public, and that can be hurtful or sexist in the wrong context.
The comedians who most adeptly circumvent this problem seem to be the ones who collaborate actively with their partners. LeeAnn Kreischer edits and produces all of Bert’s specials. Gaffigan told me that his relationship with Jeannie, who is also a writer and comedian, “transformed and solidified my career.” They wrote some of his specials almost entirely together. “I remember waking her up and saying, ‘All right, we’ve got to think of more bacon jokes,’” he said. “And she was probably breastfeeding my first child at the time.”
Gaffigan and others I interviewed said their spouses have veto power over jokes about their marriage, but the comedians try not to test their limits. “I would probably never do anything that would require a veto,” Gaffigan said. Typically, the emotional core of his marriage bits casts him as the person at fault—for example, a recent joke in his special The Skinny was about Gaffigan agreeing to get his kids a dog even though his wife is allergic.
Tom Papa, the stand-up and host of the radio program Come to Papa, said his wife, Cynthia, whom he married in 2000, can nix his jokes, and she has exercised this right “a little bit.” Once, he told me, she objected to a joke about her snoring; Papa reworked it, he said, “until it passed inspection.” Overall, he thinks performing material about his family benefits his marriage because he can “go onstage and vent,” he added. “It’s just me having fun and yelling about something that’s aggravating at home, onstage at the Comedy Cellar.” Then, he said, “You go home and you’re like, ‘I’m no longer mad at her. I said it out loud, a bunch of people laughed, and she doesn’t have to get my pettiness about it.’”
The Kreischers have two rules when it comes to jokes about LeeAnn: “One is he can talk about me as long as it’s not mean,” LeeAnn told me. “And he can talk about me as long as it’s really funny.” Bert said she hasn’t yet vetoed a joke—and in fact, she sometimes eggs him on. One time, LeeAnn farted during sex, then said, “You’re gonna talk about this onstage, aren’t you?”
To which he replied: “Can I?”
“She goes, ‘You have to,’” Bert said. “‘If it’s happened to me, it’s happened to other people.’ And I did it, and it murdered.”
The amount of time comedians spend on the road may also seem like an obstacle to marital bliss. But several of the comedians I interviewed instead saw touring, and the physical and mental space it provides, as a release valve of sorts, easing the pressure on the partnership. “Maybe me traveling is helpful,” Gaffigan said. “It’s like, she doesn’t have to deal with me. In some ways, my stand-up is my golf.” The Kreischers told me that they’d just started couples therapy because with their kids off at college, they’d noticed they were spending more time together than normal—and they wanted to get ahead of any potential problems that this new closeness might bring.
The comedians I spoke with said the most important reason for the longevity of their marriages is their self-awareness, and their ability to tune in to the emotional states of their partners, their audiences, and humans in general. “You’re always analyzing what’s going on in the world around you, and that goes for your relationship as well,” Papa said. “I think that that sensitivity makes us very present in the relationship.” He added, “You’re constantly tending to this relationship. It’s never just left alone.”
Julie Gottman, a renowned psychologist and co-founder of the Gottman Institute, which researches how to build strong romantic relationships, affirmed the importance of self-awareness. “The better you know yourself,” she told me, “the better you can express who you are, what your needs are—the more transparent you can be to the other individual.” This skill can be especially beneficial early in a relationship, when people are first selecting their partners; it might make comedians particularly good at recognizing a romantic match. “The majority of comics were not, like, alpha men in high school,” Bert Kreischer told me. They were funny and sensitive, he said, adding, “All the ones who stayed married were ones that weren’t looking just to get laid. They were looking for someone to understand them.” LeeAnn agreed. Comics, she told me, tend to “become really aware that they’ve found that special person, and then have some reverence for that.”
No profession has a monopoly on good marriages, Gottman said. (Even therapists, she pointed out, “are still making mistakes like the rest of us.”) Still, Gottman has found that one of the most important elements of a successful relationship is knowing what your partner’s priorities, beliefs, needs, and values are. You don’t have to be like your partner, but you do have to know your partner. “The fact that the comedians are really good at assessing other people’s signals for what they may be experiencing, I think, is very useful,” she said.
Early in their relationship, the Kreischers would hold what they called “The Summit,” a yearly meeting during which they had uncomfortable conversations about money, goals, sex, and other important topics in a calm and straightforward way. The practice was a perfect encapsulation of what Bert originally sought in a partner: “I don’t need big tits,” he said. “I need big empathy.” A good title for his next stand-up special, perhaps.
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