Why Tina Fey & Her Husband Jeff Richmond Call Their Marriage "Borderline Boring"
The SNL alum has been married to her husband Jeff Richmond for over two decades.
Tina Fey not only found her “wife” — fellow Saturday Night Live alum and best friend Amy Poehler — in Chicago during the early days of her comedy career, she also met her husband of over two decades, Jeff Richmond.
In the years since they first crossed paths in the Windy City in the ‘90s, Fey and Richmond have become the ultimate comedy power couple, often working together on a variety of hit projects. The two, who’ve been married since 2001, have also welcomed two daughters together: Alice, born in 2005, and Penelope, born in 2011.
They’re both “high school theater nerds,” as Fey told E! News, and, as evidenced by each of their comedy resumes, it’s clear they love to make each other laugh. For instance, when Fey admitted that she cried at the gym after learning Mean Girls, the Broadway musical they both worked on together, racked up 12 Tony nominations, Richmond didn’t miss a beat.
“To be honest, you cry at the gym a lot so,” he adorably quipped as Fey laughed in agreement. “Yeah, because I hate going to the gym.”
Read on to learn more about Fey’s husband, his accomplished career, how they met, and more.
Who is Tina Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond?
Born in 1961 in Ohio, Jeff Richmond works in the entertainment business like his wife.
Richmond is an Emmy-winning composer, comedian, producer, and director with many credits on Fey’s projects including 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Baby Mama. He was also a music director for SNL in the early 2000s. Fun fact: Richmond is the mastermind behind 30 Rock’s instantly recognizable theme song.
In addition to his work on television and movies, Richmond has also composed music for several stage productions including Fully Committed, starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and the Mean Girls musical.
More recently, Richmond has composed music on a variety of television series including NBC’s Mr. Mayor, Girls5eva, Mulligan, as well as the 2024 musical film rendition of Mean Girls.
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How did Tina Fey meet her husband, Jeff Richmond?
More than three decades ago, Fey and Richmond first met in 1993 at the iO Theater in Chicago. In fact, Richmond, the improv comedy theater’s pianist at the time, witnessed his future wife’s audition, as well as Amy Poehler’s.
“I’m the guy sitting there at the piano watching everybody audition, and Tina and Amy were among the very best,” Richmond told The New York Post in a 2018 interview. “We started hanging out offstage. Tina always made me laugh.”
In a 2007 interview with Women’s Health, Fey said she knew “almost immediately” that she had found her future husband. “We met when I was 24. He's 9 years older than I am,” she told the magazine. “It was actually a really great age difference because he was much more mature than someone my own age. There was no game playing or ‘I'll call you tomorrow.’ It was a very easy, respectful relationship from the beginning, and it very quickly and easily became quite solid.”
The two also worked at Second City in Chicago in the early ‘90s. While Richmond worked as the musical director for the theater, Fey took classes and became a member of the improvisational comedy group.
When did Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond get married?
After dating for several years, Fey and Richmond tied the knot on June 3, 2001 in a Greek Orthodox ceremony at The Merion Tribute House in Philadelphia.
Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond did long distance before working on SNL together
In 1997, Fey was living in Chicago and performing improv comedy at Second City when she was hired as a writer on SNL when she was 27 years old. In a 2003 interview with The New Yorker, Fey recalled that she was hesitant to take it, partly because she didn’t want to be so far from Richmond. Fey confided in Poehler, who quickly encouraged her to accept the job and move to New York City.
“Poehler asked her how much money she would be making in New York. When Fey named the figure, Poehler laughed,” The New Yorker article said, adding that Poehler told Fey, “I think you should take the job.”
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Three years later, Richmond also moved to the Big Apple, according to The New Yorker, when he was hired by SNL to create music for sketches. Like “Mom Jeans,” starring Fey, Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Rachel Dratch in Season 28.
“That was one of the first things, I think, I got on the show … My wife wrote that commercial,” Richmond shared during a 2013 interview with The Greene Space before jokingly recalling how little Fey was involved in him getting hired on SNL. “My wife who didn’t want to hire me for this show, really. She didn’t want to stick her neck out for me at that point. I still don’t know exactly why. She was head writer, she could've done a little bit more.”
Jeff Richmond described his marriage to Tina Fey as “borderline boring — in a good way”
In a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair, Richmond credited the success of their marriage to the lack of drama they allow in it, calling their relationship “borderline boring — in a good way.” Fey agreed, adding in the same interview, “I don’t enjoy any kind of danger or volatility. I don’t have that kind of ‘I love the bad guys’ thing. No, no thank you. I like nice people.”
Richmond added that they know and respect what are “deal breakers” in their relationship. “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,” he told the magazine. “And she has her principles and she sticks to her principles more than anybody I’ve ever met in my life.”
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How Tina Fey wooed Jeff Richmond in the early days of their relationship with chocolate cake
While Richmond certainly fell in love with Fey for a million sweet reasons, he found one of her jokes in the early days of their relationship “very adorable.”
“She used to eat a lot of chocolate cake in those days,” Richmond told The New York Post of working with Fey in Chicago. “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.”
