Real-Life Loves
Who Is Conan O’Brien’s Wife? Inside His Longtime Marriage to Liza Powel
Conan O’Brien is hosting The Oscars for the very first time on Sunday, March 2, and he’ll undoubtedly have the support of his loving wife, Liza Powel O’Brien, at the ceremony.
The couple has been married since 2002 after meeting in quite an unexpected way. Scroll down for everything we know about the pair’s relationship.
Who is Conan O’Brien’s wife Liza Powel?
Powel is a playwright, podcaster, and former copywriter. She has written at least a dozen plays, and her work has been performed at The Geffen Playhouse, Echo Theater Company, The Blank Theatre, Unscreened LA, Naked Angels LA, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, Hedgebrook, and Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, according to her website.
She received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a master of fine arts degree (MFA) in fiction writing from Columbia University. Her 2019 play The Great Experiment was inspired by her time at Vassar.
In 2022, Powel began hosting the Significant Others podcast on O’Brien’s Team Coco network. “[Significant Others episodes] tell the story of a talented, difficult and little-known individual who altered the destiny of their better-known partner, child, sibling or friend and impacted the world they left behind,” the description reveals. The most recent episode of the podcast aired in June 2024.
How did Conan O’Brien meet his wife?
O’Brien and Powel met in 1998 while she was working as a copywriter at the Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency. O’Brien visited the agency while filming a remote segment for his show Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Powel was on one of the teams that was part of the segment.
“I immediately start talking to her and then I’m not even trying to be funny,” O’Brien recalled on The Michelle Obama Podcast in 2020. “I’m just trying to find out more about this woman.” He said they had a 20-minute conversation before he left the room, then continued talking in the lobby afterwards.
“She said everything a woman is not supposed to say, leading off with, ‘Yeah, I saw my gynecologist recently, and my gynecologist said I need to start having children in the next two to three years, if I really want them to be healthy,’” O’Brien continued. “And me, rather than be panicked, I’m thinking, ‘Yes, you should have children. Your children should be my children.’” After exchanging information, they started dating and went on to tie the knot in 2002.
“Somewhere, in the vault at NBC, there’s footage of me literally falling for my wife on camera,” O’Brien told Piers Morgan in 2012. His talk show uploaded the video to YouTube in 2020, and Powel later revealed, “[Conan] won’t watch it. He wants to remember it instead.”
Does Conan O’Brien have kids?
O’Brien and Powel are parents to two children. Their daughter, Neve, was born in 2003, followed by a son, Beckett, in 2005.
“It’s sort of terrifying to watch them [grow up],” Powel admitted while speaking to the Ojai Playwrights Conference in 2020. “They have a lot of confidence in some ways and doubt in other ways, but they don’t know any of that yet, and to know it for them is very hard sometimes.”
The Oscars 2025, Sunday, March 2, 7/6c, ABC
