Molly McNearney revealed the awkward reality of dating her boss during a candid podcast appearance with husband Jimmy Kimmel.
The 48-year-old executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” joined Kimmel, 58, on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, where she recalled the moment she realized her then-colleague was interested in having sex with her. McNearney had already worked at the late-night show for eight years before their romance began.
It all started with an office icebreaker. During a meeting, a colleague asked everyone to name their five favorite foods — a detail Kimmel quietly filed away for a later occasion.
“Pizza and gnocchi, crab claws, BLT and chocolate chip cookies,” McNearney listed, all of which the presenter cooked for her six months later.
“Talk about a long play,” she joked, noting how “nervous” she felt spending time with her “boss” outside of work.
She recalled: “I go to Jimmy’s house, he asks me to come over after work, and he opens up the door and it smells delicious and he’s like, ‘I made some things,’ and it was pizza and gnocchi, crab claws, chocolate chop cookies and BLT.”
“It made me very excited and very nervous. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, no. This is a bad idea.’ He was my boss.”
While Kimmel suggested he “didn’t have that thought at the time,” his now-wife clapped back: “The person in power usually doesn’t, but I was very nervous about it. I thought it was a terrible idea. I was very skittish.”
The pair admitted that they kept the relationship under wraps during their early months of dating. McNearney, now a mom of two, added: “I just kept thinking statistically this is not going to work out and your life isn’t going to change but mine does. And that’s what freaked me out. Because I had worked really really hard.”
“I was very nervous about it changing the work dynamic and I was in a room of mostly men and we had a great thing going on and I didn’t want it to change,” she continued.
The couple tied the knot in 2013 after dating since 2009, and now share two children together.
McNearney first met Kimmel shortly after joining the show. “I met him a couple weeks into working at the show,” she recalled. “I went into the office with the executive producer at the time. I don’t think Jimmy even looked up from his desk when I was introduced to him,” she joked.
Kimmel is also dad to Catherine ‘Katie’, now 34, and Kevin, 32, from his first marriage to Gina Kimmel, between 1988 and 2002.
In the viral moment that sparked their romance, Kimmel’s careful six-month planning of McNearney’s favorite foods transformed an awkward workplace dynamic into a lasting relationship. The producer’s initial hesitation about the power imbalance eventually gave way to a marriage that has now lasted more than a decade.
Kimmel continues hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” weeknights on ABC.