Meet Tina Fey's Better Half and Learn About Their Hilarious Love Story
Tina Fey and husband Jeff Richmond
Long before hosting the Golden Globes and getting her big break on Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey met her leading man, Jeff Richmond, in Chicago. The "lovers," a word that bummed 30 Rock's Liz Lemon out unless it was between meat and pizza, have gone on to collaborate on a number of projects together over the years. Get to know the actress' Emmy Award-winning husband.
Who is Tina Fey's husband Jeff Richmond?
Richmond is a composer, producer, director and three-time Emmy winner. In a 2009 Vanity Fair feature on Fey, the Ohio native called himself “'the Joe Biden of husbands' because he’s prone to 'drop the bomb' in interviews."
Alec Baldwin wrote in his memoir Nevertheless, (via PEOPLE), that Fey describes Richmond as "travel-size." “When I saw him, I thought, What’s she doing with him?" Baldwin wrote. “With his spools of curly brown hair and oversize eyes, Jeff resembles a Margaret Keane painting.” Though when the actor worked with the couple years later on 30 Rock, he "changed that to ‘What’s he doing with her?’” Baldwin noted, “Jeff, who was the talented composer and music supervisor on 30 Rock, is as loose and outgoing as Tina is cautious and dry.”
How did Tina Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond first meet?
Per the New York Post, Richmond met Fey, as well as Amy Poehler, while working as an in-house pianist at Del Close’s ImprovOlympic Theater in Chicago. “I’m the guy sitting there at the piano watching everybody audition, and Tina and Amy were among the very best,” he shared. “We started hanging out offstage. Tina always made me laugh. She used to eat a lot of chocolate cake in those days, and she’d black up one of her teeth during conversation. It may be losing something in translation here, but it was very funny and very, very adorable.”
According to Richmond, his future wife fell in love with him because he "was the only one who was getting paid back then, so I could pick up the check.”
Richmond admitted to The News-Heraldthat he and Fey "clicked early on." "I found something in her that made me laugh and want to get to know her,” he said. “And I found her to be a very genuine person, a very kind person, but also kind of bitter and (possessing) a caustic wit—and I liked that about her. So we clicked early on.”
Related: Tina Fey Opens up About the Inspiration Behind Mean Girls: It "Was About This Period of My Life When I Felt Like I Was an Outsider”
When did Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond get married?
The pair tied the knot in 2001. Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2009, Richmond called his and Fey's marriage “borderline boring—in a good way.”
“I know how she feels about some things,” he shared. “Like, we never had to deal with any of this, but: adultery. Just looking at examples from other people’s lives, we know that anything like that, messing around, is just such a complete ‘No’ to her. And she has her principles and she sticks to her principles more than anybody I’ve ever met in my life. Like that whole idea of, if you are in a relationship, there are deal breakers. There’s not a lot of gray area in being flirty with somebody. She’s very black-and-white: ‘We’re married—you can’t.’”
Meanwhile, Fey told Vanity Fair that she doesn't "have that kind of ‘I love the bad guys’ thing." She said, "No, no thank you. I like nice people.”
Do Tina Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond have any kids?
Fey and Richmond share two children together, daughters Alice and Penelope.
Revealing her second pregnancy to Oprah Winfrey in 2011, Fey said (via Reuters), “My husband and I really decided that we felt rather than risk having 30 Rock end in several years and feeling like part of our family is missing that we were going to prioritize our family.”
Have Tina Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond worked together?
Richmond became the musical director at Second City e.t.c. in 1995, while Fey, who took classes at Second City, auditioned for The Second City Touring Company in 1994 and joined the Mainstage company as an understudy for actor Jon Glaser in 1996.
In 1997, the Baby Mama actress was hired as a head writer at Saturday Night Live, which Richmond later became the musical director of. Following SNL, the pair collaborated on 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Mean Girls the musical.
Related: 15 Funny Liz Lemon Quotes to Live Your Life By
It helps their working relationship that they don't always work the same way. Fey explained to The Hollywood Reporter, "We work well together in that we know that sometimes we like to work differently." She added, "For example, I like to take the subway to work so I can think. Jeff does not like to take the subway. So we would leave our house together and meet each other at the rehearsal studio."
When asked the secret to working with his wife, Richmond told Ohiomagazine.com, "We’ve worked very closely together on projects, but [the musical] was a bigger monster to tackle. We had to get the adaptation correct but still make it its own thing. We’ve worked together so long we have a shorthand together. You come out of theater and often diverge into film and television before you find your way back to what you originally love. Tina and I are both theater geeks at heart."
