It's not conversation or attraction that keeps people together, it's the comfort they feel around each other, believes the famous comedian.
For some people, love doesn't show up until later in life and when it does it feels like a bolt of lightning. They might have been busy making a career or maybe they just hadn't met the right person. For whatever reason, when they finally meet the love of their life the relationship is for keeps.
Just like the character Jerry Seinfeld played on his famous sitcom Seinfeld, he was a bachelor for a long time. He was famous, successful, and rich when, at the age of 44, he met Jessica, born Nina Sklar. He had dated a few times and didn't want to get married, but she changed his world upside down. The world-famous comedian, film producer, and creator of the Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee fell in love instantly with her, and they have been together for more than 20 years now.
They met in August 1998 at a Reebok gym on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, according to Jessica's account in The New York Times. Initially, he tried to get her attention by cracking jokes around the 27-year-old but she brushed it aside, but then "he came around again and said something funny, and I actually had to laugh," Jessica admits.
On their first date, the publicist and cookbook author cooked Long Island chicken parmesan, since both of them are from Long Island. He loved how she didn't care about showing him off at a restaurant and was instead low-key. The dish has now become a Sunday night dinner staple in their married life, according to Eater.com.
The couple started dating soon after and months later when they were at a grocery store together, he turned to her and said, "This is the perfect time to tell you that I love you," according to Eater.com.
"When I met her I thought we can build a life together," Seinfeld told Oprah Winfrey about his relationship with Jessica.
When the then 45-year-old zillionaire got engaged in 1999 to the then 28-year-old publicist for fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, there was some controversy. She had recently left a short-lived marriage and they were hounded by paparazzi. So, they kept their wedding private and quietly tied the knot in New York City on December 25, 1999.
“Jerry and Jessica are perfect together,” Carolyn Liebling, Seinfeld’s sister and manager told People. Rain Kramer, a friend of Jessica's since high school, said, "When you see them together, you see how happy they are. They’re not hiding how they feel. They let it show."
Since then, many years have passed and the couple has built a life together. Theirs is one of the most enduring marriages in fickle Hollywood. He told Oprah Winfrey years later that he knew right away that she was the one. For him, it wasn't the conversation or the attraction but the comfort level he felt when she was in his house. "If you can feel comfortable when someone comes into your house... I don't know what that is but this is someone I want to spend my life with," he said.
The couple is parents to three children Sascha, 19, Julian, 16, and Shepherd, 14 and when asked what is the secret to their happiness, Seinfeld said that it was their ability to laugh at everything together.
"From the day I met her, that was really our connection," Seinfeld told Closer Weekly. "We always have fun and we laugh and she’s got a great sense of humor. She’s very quick and sarcastic and all the qualities that I like. She’s very sharp. She catches all the wrongness," he said. While Jessica, who runs a charity now, said, "He’s the most incredible communicator and so he’s better at this relationship than I am."
He joked that the length of marriage makes it better. “It’s ten years of training and then you start to understand what you’re doing," he told People.
While they love traveling and have to do that for work, they don't care about going out every night. Being at home is what makes them happy as a couple. They keep the romance alive by thinking that every night is date night. "We just like to hang out and it’s not like a big deal for us to go to a restaurant. It’s just about being the same room for us. We love being in the same room," he said.
References:
https://people.com/archive/cover-story-jerry-engaged-get-out-vol-52-no-20/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Pix5QcSEM
https://www.eater.com/2017/5/1/15453906/jerry-seinfeld-zabars-jessica-seinfeld-love-story
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/fashion/04seinfeld.html?
https://people.com/tv/jerry-and-jessica-seinfeld-reveal-their-secrets-to-a-happy-marriage/
