Jay Leno was around 25 years old when he first met his wife, Mavis Leno, at a local comedy club in 1976, with the two getting married four years later, in 1980.
They have been happily married ever since, but in 2024, it was disclosed that Mavis had been diagnosed with an advanced form of dementia, and that Jay had been granted a conservatorship over their joint estate.
He also became Mavis’s primary caregiver amid her diagnosis, and the star has now candidly opened up about honoring his wedding vows of remaining by his wife’s side in sickness and in health — while also expressing his shock at a Hollywood friend asking him if he was planning to get a girlfriend now that Mavis was sick.
During a recent appearance on Life Above the Noise with Maria Shriver, Jay said: “I’ve been very fortunate, I’ve been very lucky. The people I feel sorry for; nurse, policeman, teacher, you’ve got a job, and you’ve got to take care of elderly parents or a spouse or something like that. I can afford to have someone with Mavis when I’m not there, so I come home at 6 p.m. and make dinner, and it’s good, you know? I never want to be all ‘woe is me,’ because it’s not. I’m very fortunate. And like I’ve said a bunch of times, you take a vow when you get married, and people are stunned that you would live up to it.”
“My favorite thing was, this is the most Hollywood thing, a guy said to me: ‘So, are you going to get a girlfriend now?’” Jay then recalled. “I have a girlfriend. I’m married! I’ve been married for 45 years! He’s like: ‘Yeah, but, you know…’ No. We are in this together… You can’t… ‘Honey, I’m seeing my girlfriend, I’ll be back later,’ it was just the most Hollywood thing. It made me laugh.”
“They’re making a big thing out of it when you’re just doing the right thing, which you’re supposed to do,” Jay went on. “That used to be the norm, and then, when you strayed, that was the out-of-whack part. Now, the out-of-whack part is fairly common, and staying and doing what we’re supposed to do is stunning to people. We kind of made a deal, you know?”
Jay added that he has been “pretty lucky up to this point,” and now that it’s getting “a little tricky” he’s glad that he is “passing the test.” He explained: “You never quite know what you’re going to do in that situation, or in any situation, so I like to think I made the right decision.”
Discussing his and Mavis’s day-to-day life, Jay said: “Making my wife laugh is still one of my primary things, and you figure out how to do it. The other night, we’re lying in bed, and Mavis says, it’s like two o’clock, and she says: ‘Honey, I love you.’ I said: ‘You’re having a nightmare, go back to bed,’ and she thought that was the funniest thing, she just couldn’t stop laughing. To me, that’s what’s fun: ‘Oh, I got a laugh out,’ I enjoy that. I try to come up with stupid jokes.”
Jay also shared his relief that Mavis still recognizes him, and added that he tries to protect her from being exposed to “depressing” things on TV, including the news. He said: “My thing is just to try to keep her mood constantly up and lively.”
When asked what his “biggest surprise” has been as a caregiver, he said: “Probably how much I enjoy it. Changing somebody is not the most romantic thing you can do, but you realize it doesn’t get more intimate than that if you still care for the person. I just find myself going: ‘OK, this is not that bad,’ and I enjoy going home. I don’t take the long way home and arrive late; I get home as soon as I can and I enjoy taking care of her and trying to come up with things she likes and things to make her laugh.”
Needless to say, Jay’s entire interview has struck a chord with people — and many have been unable to hide their horror at his revelation that somebody asked if he planned to get a girlfriend. Reacting to this specific quote on X, one person wrote: “Who ask something like that when your wife of 45 years is battling dementia? That was sick.”