Radio host and author Dennis Prager is undoubtedly right when he says, “The vast majority of those who are famous are not significant and the vast majority of those who are significant are not famous.” That’s why famous people who show themselves significant are so wonderful to find. Jay Leno has recently proven himself truly significant – not so much as a comedian, but as a man who has embraced his wedding vows even as his wife suffers from dementia.
Leno, a comic who hit the jackpot when he became Johnny Carson’s successor as the host of the Tonight Show many years ago, was always both funny and personable. The kind of guy you can imagine you would like to hang around in real life, Leno tells jokes about both sides of the political aisle.
Though interviews indicate that his politics are conventionally liberal, he has criticized Barack Obama and John Kerry as well as Donald Trump. He’s generally aimed his act at ordinary Americans of all stripes. Unlike the deeply unfunny contemporary comics Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers (to take the most egregious examples), Leno never forgot that his job is to tell jokes rather than repeat Democrat political propaganda.
Indeed, Leno never let politics overshadow the ordinary human life that all politics should serve and protect. Leno loves tinkering around with old cars and playing fun games. After his Tonight Show stint, he hosted a show about cars and motorcycles called Jay Leno’s Garage and then a revival of You Bet Your Life.
Most of all, Leno loves his wife, Mavis. Though doing so doesn’t necessarily make a man famous, it does make him significant. In Leno’s case, it has brought this famous man more fame.
Leno met Mavis in the 1970s at a comedy club, and the two wed in 1980. Leno has said in interviews that they have always been at ease with each other. That ease is still there, but the relationship has changed. News outlets reported in 2024 that Leno was granted conservatorship over Mavis Leno’s estate due to her advanced dementia. At that time, a court-appointed lawyer testified that Mavis, now 79, “sometimes does not know her husband, Jay, nor her date of birth.” The judge in the case said it wasn’t a difficult decision, telling Leno, “Everything you’re doing is right.”
Since that time, Leno has repeatedly been asked about how things are going. His testimony has always been refreshingly candid, with not a hint of self-pity. Last year, he told People: “I’ve been very lucky in my life. My wife is fighting dementia and all that, but it’s not cancer.” He explained that he doesn’t resent it. “It’s not work, because people come up, and say they feel so sorry,” Leno said. “I understand the sympathy, because I know a lot of people are going through it, but it’s okay.”
Even better, he added: “I like taking care of her. I enjoy her company, and we have a good time. We have fun with it, and it is what it is.”
Now, Leno is in the news again. In an interview with Maria Shriver that aired this past week, Leno again responded to questions about his wife’s dementia. Leno was very honest about his good fortune, noting that lots of ordinary people don’t have the resources he does. “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?” he said. “I never want to be all ‘woe is me,’ because it’s not.”
If Leno’s wealth has certain advantages, though, it also has certain temptations. He recounted “the most Hollywood thing, a guy said to me: ‘So, are you going to get a girlfriend now?’” Leno’s recounting of his response was perfect: “Well, no. I have a girlfriend. I’m married. We’ve been married 45 years, you know what I mean? [We’re] kind of in this together. You can’t go, ‘Honey, I’ll be with my girlfriend, I’ll be back later.’”
Leno reflected on how crazy it is that today, “you take a vow when you get married, and people are stunned that you would live up to it.”If his politics are those of an old-fashioned conventional liberal, his moral vision is properly conservative. “That kind of used to be the norm,” he added, “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 you’re supposed to do is stunning to people. ‘Why do you do that?’ ‘Well, we kind of made a deal.’”
Leno’s deal was the one that many of us made at weddings with vows “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” If it is less common these days to keep them, and it seems never to have been that common among Hollywood types, it is indeed stunning to see someone do it.
It is common to observe that we don’t have enough examples of real manhood around. Shocking as it is to say, a Hollywood guy is providing one. Jay Leno’s comedic career is something to be proud of. But, much more important is how he is modeling what it means to be a true husband. That is significance.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
