Molly McNearney Recalls Start of Romance With Jimmy Kimmel

Molly McNearney, the wife of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, has revealed the moment she realized their secret office romance was about to change, describing how a home-cooked meal of her favorite foods signaled his intentions.

McNearney, 58-year-old Kimmel's co-head writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live alongside Danny Ricker and Josh Halloway, is a decade younger than her husband. Kimmel hired her as a writer's assistant in 2004, but the pair did not begin dating until October 2009, seven months after he ended his seven-year relationship with fellow comedian Sarah Silverman.

McNearney told the Armchair Expert podcast on Monday that months before they got together, Kimmel's cousin and fellow writer Sal Iacono had asked the writers' room a hypothetical question: if you could only eat five foods for the rest of your life, what would they be.

"I remember I said, 'Pizza, crab claws, BLT, and chocolate chip cookies,'" McNearney said.

"And about six months later, talk about long play, six months later, I go to Jimmy's house. He asks me to come over after work. I just got back from Africa, I think. And he was going to help me build a classroom over there."

"I went over to his house and he opens up the door and it smells delicious. And he's like, 'I've made some things.' And it was pizza, crab claws, chocolate chip cookies, and BLT. He had remembered what my favorite foods were and he made them all!"

The moment she knew

Armchair Expert host Dax Shepard asked McNearney whether she "immediately register[ed] that as, 'Oh, he wants to f***.'"

"Yes, yes! It made me very excited and very nervous!" McNearney recalled.

"But I remember thinking, 'Oh, no. This is a bad idea.'"

Kimmel interjected: "I didn't have that thought."

"Yeah, no, very clearly. No, no. The person in power usually doesn't. But I was very nervous about it," she said.

"I thought it was a terrible idea and I was very skittish and I kept telling him, 'I think this is a bad idea.' And he kept saying, 'It's not a bad idea.'"

Keeping the relationship quiet

McNearney said she and her now "husboss" kept their relationship "very, very quiet" for the first few months because she worried about how it would change the mostly male dynamic of the writers' room.

"I just kept thinking, statistically this is not going to work out, and [his] life isn't going to change but mine will," she recalled. "And that's what freaked me out. But I was really freaked out about it because I had worked really, really hard."

Marriage and family

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for the couple for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Kimmel and McNearney have been married for 13 years and have two children together, 12-year-old daughter Jane and nine-year-old son Billy. Billy's open heart surgery, needed because of a rare congenital heart defect, made national headlines in 2017.

McNearney is also stepmother to Kimmel's two adult children, daughter Katie, nearly 35, and son Kevin, 32, from his 15-year marriage to his Arizona State University college sweetheart Gina Maddy, which ended in 2003.

Kimmel's summer break

Kimmel, who was born in Brooklyn, has not hosted his late-night show since June 18 and will remain on his annual summer vacation until he returns to the El Capitan Entertainment Centre on September 8.

Singer Jelly Roll, who has slimmed down significantly, will serve as guest host this week, with guests including Glen Powell and Jay Shetty appearing Monday night.

It has been nearly a year since ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live for three episodes over Kimmel's remarks about Charlie Kirk's assassination.