Joy Behar and Steve Janowtiz with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, in 2016. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Yahoo)
Comedian Joy Behar, one of the co-hosts of The View, is married to Steve Janowitz. The two have only been married since 2011, but were famously a couple for 29 years before tying the knot.
Behar was one of the first View co-hosts when the show began in 1997. She originally left the show in March 2013, only to come back periodically as a guest co-host. By August 2015, she came back full-time and remains a co-host on the show. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Behar has an estimated net worth of $12 million. She was previously married to Joe Behar from 1965 to 1981 and has a daughter, Eve, from that marriage.
Here’s a look at her relationship with Janowitz.
1. Behar & Janowitz Began Their Relationship in 1982
Joy Behar in 2016. (Getty)
Behar and Janowitz dated for 29 years before they finally got married in August 2011. She once said that they held off on getting married because she wanted to wait until same-sex marriage was legal in New York. After it became legal, she said on The View that “‘spousal equivalents’ is so 2010.”
She also said that she was tired of asking for senior discounts for her “boyfriend” and Janowitz was tired of her relatives calling him “that old guy.”
2. Behar Said She Didn’t Want to Marry Janowitz Until His Parents Were Dead
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“I waited until all the parents were dead,” the 74-year-old Behar told Ray. “So I have no in-laws at all. He has none and I have none. ‘Cause marriage is mostly about in-laws, I find. They always want you to visit them and come for lasagna.”
Behar also told Ray that Janowitz snores after drinking wine and likes to tell her every little thing he does. But he still thinks she’s perfect… almost.
“All of my husbands had the same problem with me. I lose things,” Behar told Ray. “But I have trained them all to locate where I left my brassieres, for example. I’ll say ‘Where is that brassiere?’ and they’ll say ‘It’s hanging on the bathroom door.’ Stuff like that. I lose things and I fall. These are my two things.”
3. Janowitz Is a Retired Schoolteacher
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As the New York Times notes in a 2014 profile of Behar, Janowitz is a retired schoolteacher. Since they have no children together and her daughter Eve is already a mother herself, they get to enjoy hosting guests in their three-bedroom New York City apartment.
They live on the Upper West Side in a 1,400-square-foot apartment on the sixth floor of their building. They host “events” with friends. “I like an apartment that can be utilized for a lot of different things,” Behar told the Times in 2014.
“The location has everything I need,” Behar said of the neighborhood outside her apartment. “There’s a nail salon on the ground floor, which means I can go downstairs in thongs in the middle of a polar vortex. Very important. There’s an Italian restaurant across the street with great food. There’s a Duane Reade across the street where I can get my Lipitor. And Broadway is always busy. I get spooked in quiet neighborhoods. I want a quiet apartment, but I want a loud neighborhood.”
4. Behar Said She Also Got Married Because She Didn’t Want Her Granddaughter Asking If She’s a ‘Puttana’
In a 2012 interview with the New York Times, Behar also explained why she finally got married. She “didn’t want her grandchild asking, ‘Is Nana a puttana,'” according to the Times.
She also told the paper that her husband was “tired of holding his belly in.” She was also dreaming of making the cover of “Brides’ AARP edition.”
5. Behar Said in 2009 She Might Get Married, but Called off the Engagement
Behar and Janowitz almost got married two years before they really did. In a 2009 interview with Barbara Walters on Sirius XM Radio, Behar said that she was seriously considering marriage. At that point, they had been together for over 26 years.
“Somebody that I know lost her partner. They were gay women. And the partner was in the hospital, and she had to pretend that she was her sister in order to really deal with stuff,” Behar told Walters in 2009. “I don’t want that to happen to us and I also just feel that I want to.”
They did get in engaged, but in June 2009, they broke it off. She just wanted to stop talking about getting married.
“Clear it up,” Behar told OK! Magazine in July 2009. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. That’s why I told him I broke it off. What I’ll do is we’ll get married, and then I’ll tell it. Once you open those floodgates, it really was like ‘whoa!’ Everybody was calling me and asking me, so I decided to call it off.”
They married in August 2011, in a “private ceremony,” a View rep told People Magazine.