Megyn Kelly has been married two times. Her first husband, Dan Kendall, is a respected Virginia doctor who only spoke publicly about her when he feared people falsely suspected he’d cheated on Kelly.
Kelly, the NBC talk show host, is currently married to novelist Doug Brunt, whom she met on a blind date in 2006. The couple has three children: Yates, Yardley, and Thatcher. The marriage of Megyn Kelly and Dan Kendall did not produce any children. In fact, her lack of a desire to start a family at that time was part of the reason the marriage crumbled, Kelly has claimed.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Kendall Met Megyn Kelly at a Chicago Street Festival
GettyMegyn Kelly.
Dr. Dan Kendall has said very little about Megyn Kelly over the years, but he unloaded in detail in an exclusive interview with UK Daily Mail in 2015, while she was still on Fox News. The reason: Kelly had spoken publicly about being “betrayed,” clarifying she did not mean her current husband, Doug Brunt. That left Kendall upset that some people might suspect he cheated on Kelly, when he says he never did.
That’s what propelled him to grant an interview with Daily Mail. Kendall described how he met Megyn Kelly to Daily Mail, saying, “I met her in Chicago at a street festival. She was out with friends and we became friends. I was a third year medical student and she was an attorney working for Bickel & Brewer as a fourth year lawyer.” They lived together in New York, Baltimore, and Chicago, reported Daily Mail.
According to a Vanity Fair profile on Kelly, “By age 33 she was married to a doctor (her first husband), was working at the prestigious law firm Jones Day, had paid back her loans, and was on her way to making partner … when she realized she wasn’t fulfilled.” She decided to embark on a career in TV news. Her marriage didn’t survive it.
2. Kendall Says the Marriage Crumbled Because Kelly Needs a ‘Type B’ Husband
Daniel Kendall, Megyn Kelly’s ex-husband, is an anesthesiologist. (Yelp)
Kendall told UK Daily Mail in 2015 that they broke up in part because Kelly didn’t want a family at that time and because he believed she needed a “Type B husband” due to their long work hours.
In his most controversial comment to Daily Mail, Kendall said, “I wanted a wife and she wanted a wife — we both needed someone to cook and clean and support us. She has very much a Type A personality. I couldn’t imagine her staying at home. She needed more of a Type B husband. Sometimes with two professionals it doesn’t work out, we were both working extremely hard and both excelling at what we did. It is just a matter that sometimes two personalities can clash.” You can read his full interview here.
According to a Vanity Fair profile on her second husband, Doug Brunt “is straight out of central casting for the Perfect Guy: a handsome, successful novelist, who is on call with their three young children (sons Thatcher and Yates and daughter Yardley) when she’s working.”
3. Kendall Is a Physician Who Has Remarried
According to Daily Mail, Dan Kendall has done quite well for himself. The site said he was living in a $2 million home in Virginia.
Daily Mail defined Kendall as “a top anesthesiologist and pain management physician” and said that he married Megyn Kelly in 2001, “just 18 days after 9/11 having dated for nearly four years. They divorced amicably in 2006 and she moved out to a house just 200 yards away so they could keep close.” Daily Mail reports he is remarried to wife Emily, with whom he has three children. Emily Kendall’s Facebook page says she studied for her MBA at Virginia Tech. Her Facebook page is filled with photos of her husband and children.
A physician’s website for Kendall says he has “long been interested in the field of pain management” and described him as an “expert clinician with advanced training.” He joined the National Spine & Pain Centers in 2004 after completing a Baltimore fellowship.
“A respected leader among his colleagues, Dr. Kendall was elected Chief Fellow and ultimately served as a clinical instructor at Johns Hopkins Hospital,” the website says, adding that he has published articles and lectured nationally “on a range of interventional pain management topics,” including spinal cord stimulation.”
4. Megyn Kelly Is Currently Married to a Published Author
Megyn Kelly and Doug Brunt.
Douglas Brunt, Megyn Kelly’s husband, and the father of her three children, is a novelist who hails from Philadelphia. Brunt wrote the book Ghosts of Manhattan, which, according to the blurb on Amazon.com, “offers a withering view of life on Wall Street from the perspective of an unhappy insider who is too hooked on the money to find a way out, even as his career is ruining his marriage and corroding his soul.”
Brunt’s second book was The Means; the book’s blurb on Amazon says, “Part Primary Colors, part House of Cards, The Means takes you deep into high-stakes politics where everyone has something to hide. Tom Pauley is a conservative trial attorney in Durham, NC, who is tapped by GOP leaders to campaign for the Governor’s mansion. His bold style makes him a favorite for a run at the White House.” The book includes a character named Samantha Davis, described as “a child actor-turned-lawyer-turned-journalist, working her way up from the bottom in a competitive industry. She is determined and brilliant, and her dogged pursuit of a decade-old story could trigger a scandal that would upend the political landscape.”
In 2017, Brunt’s book, Trophy Son, was published.
A great time w/@JaniceDean & friends celebrating the release of “Trophy Son” by @DougBrunt. Perfect dad’s day gift!
Kelly and Brunt met on a 2006 blind date, she recounted in her own book, Settle For More. “A woman I knew e-mailed me to say that she wanted to fix me up with a colleague of hers,” Kelly wrote. “They’d been flying somewhere and were watching me on Fox News from their seats. She saw that he liked me. He’s reserved, but she saw it.”
In Humans of New York, Brunt said, “We started dating shortly after she acquired a stalker—bad start, I know. So she had security with her 24/7. Our first date went great. It was the kind of night that was clearly going to end with a kiss. But I had to kiss her in front of the security guards. It was awkward. It was like our parents were watching. The next morning she knocked on my hotel room door. She was alone. She walked into the room, and said: ‘I can do better.’”
5. Kelly & Her Second Husband Have Three Children
Amazing fall day – outside for most of it with my family. #theymakemyheartsing http://t.co/r3isaDzoDM
In 2014, while she was still on Fox News, Megyn Kelly told People Magazine that the show gave her a “a setup that allows me to be a stay-at-home mom in the day and full-time employee in the night. It works out well for my home and work life, but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for rest.”
She told People that her children don’t realize what she does for a living, saying, “I don’t think they know I’m actually on TV for a living.” According to Vanity Fair, Megyn Kelly “was raised in Syracuse and a suburb of Albany, the third child of a nurse and an education professor.” Kelly claimed she switched to NBC in part to spend more time with her family.