‘The Honeymooners’ Inspired Mavis Leno Not to Have Children
Mavis Leno, who married Jay Leno in 1980, has been in the news this week. The 73-year-old talk show host, Jay Leno, filed legal documents to become conservator over his wife’s estate, citing an Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis as the reason. The couple’s longstanding marriage has been a Hollywood success story, but their love story is hardly traditional. Mavis Leno insisted she never wanted to get married and entered her relationship with Leno in the 1970s without an agenda. She didn’t want to have children, either, and she never did. The Honeymooners inspired that decision.
Mavis Leno once revealed that ‘The Honeymooners’ inspired her decision not to have children
Mavis and Jay Leno do not have any children. It seems the couple made that decision together, but Mavis Leno’s mind was made up long before she met her now husband at The Comedy Store. In fact, she said she was inspired to forgo the tradition of marriage and children by the time she was 7 or 8, and the show The Honeymooners helped her make that decision.
In 2014, Mavis and Jay Leno sat down for an interview with The Los Angeles Times. Mavis recalled watching The Honeymooners as a small child. She remembered being struck by the fact that Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton were married to beautiful women whom they did nothing but complain about. That wasn’t the only issue she saw. Mavis said she was also troubled by the fact that the women appeared stuck, bored, and unfulfilled. Even as a child, she insisted, the dynamic was difficult for her to swallow. She decided then, and there it wasn’t for her.
Mavis Leno did get married, though
While Mavis said that she had told her mother when she was just seven years old that she didn’t want to marry and have children, she eventually got married. That was more of a logical decision than a romantic one, though. Both Jay and Mavis Leno admit to that.
The duo has been inseparable since they met in the late 1970s. Still, they only decided to marry for insurance purposes. Jay Leno recalled to the Los Angeles Times that he had taken out an insurance policy but worried that Mavis wouldn’t get anything from it if they weren’t married. Together, they decided to tie the knot. There was no engagement ring nor romantic proposal. That was perfectly fine by Mavis. She insisted that Jay did want to get her an engagement ring, but she opted to forgo it. She received a ring many years later, though.
