All About ‘Survivor’ Host Jeff Probst’s Wife — Meet Lisa Ann Russell
Survivor host Jeff Probst has been a mainstay on television since the start of this century, but his wife, Lisa Ann Russell, is also familiar with the entertainment industry. The model-turned-actor married Probst in 2011. Here’s everything to know about Russell and the family she has built with Probst.
Jeff Probst’s wife, Lisa Ann Russell, was a model and an actor
Russell was born in Illinois but moved to California to pursue a career as a model. She worked as a model for Revlon before shifting into acting. Per IMDb, Russell made her debut as an actor on Saved by the Bell: The College Years in 1993. Throughout the 1990s, she accepted roles in projects such as A.P.E.X., Twisted Love, and Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Knights.
Russell married Saved by the Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar in 1996. The pair share two children together. Russell and Gosselaar announced their separation in 2010 and finalized their divorce in 2011.
How did Jeff Probst meet his wife, Lisa Ann Russell?
Probst and Russell have been married for over a decade, and they can credit Survivor creator Mark Burnett with bringing them together. He hosted a Christmas party and invited both Russell and Probst.
“I met [my wife] at Mark Burnett’s party … Mark Burnett has an annual Christmas party, which is the craziest Christmas party I’ve ever been to because of the eclectic group of people there,” he told Larry King, adding, “You have Gary Busey on one end doing these pressure points on your arm trying to bring you down … Meanwhile, there’s Barbra Streisand talking to Paris Hilton on the other couch and there’s Arsenio Hall and then there’s David, the composer, David Foster! [Russell] was there with two other friends, just there to see the spectacle.”
In 2011, the couple married in an intimate ceremony in Los Angeles.
Jeff Probst is a stepfather to her children
Probst always envisioned himself as a parent, and his marriage to Russell allowed him to step into this role.
“I married the right person,” he told King. “I’ve always thought I’d have this family, and this great family unit because that’s what I came from. And then one day I met this woman and it happened. And she had two kids from her marriage … They raised these two young kids with the kind of love, that the kids, they see me — and [Gosselaar’s] now remarried, his wife — they just see us as two more parents.”
In another interview, Probst expressed his excitement about being a dad.
“As weird as it sounds to say, I was dropped into their lives and now I feel like a dad,” Probst told HuffPost. “It doesn’t feel weird when they call me dad and it doesn’t take away from the fact that they have another dad — their biological dad — but it doesn’t lessen the impact I feel as a dad.”
