Jay Leno was asked if he’d get a girlfriend while wife battles dementia

When Jay Leno said “in sickness and in health” to his wife Mavis 45 years ago, he meant it.

“You take a vow when you get married, and people are stunned, they’re shocked when you live up to it,” Leno said on Maria Shriver’s “Life Above the Noise” podcast.

Leno has been married to Mavis since 1980. In 2024, he revealed she had been diagnosed with dementia, and he has been by her side through the good and bad.

But some people have apparently found that devotion to be outside the norm.

“My favorite thing — this is the most Hollywood thing — a guy said to me, ‘So are you going to get a girlfriend now?’ ” Leno recalled. He said he replied, “‘Well, no. I have a girlfriend. I’m married.’ We’ve been married 45 years, you know what I mean? [We’re] kind of in this together. You can’t go, ‘Honey, I’ll be with my girlfriend, I’ll be back later.’”

He added that he is “just doing the right thing because you’re supposed to.”

“That kind of used to be the norm, and then when you strayed, that was the out of whack part,” Leno continued. “Now the out of whack part is fairly common, and staying and doing what you’re supposed to do is stunning to people. ‘Why do you do that?’ ‘Well, we kind of made a deal.’”

Shriver, whose father, Sargent Shriver, suffered from Alzheimer’s before his death in 2011, noted that “millions” of people do similar caregiving and it can take a “toll.”

But Leno didn’t feel like being a caregiver is a burden.

“I haven’t really been tested in my life. I wasn’t in the army. I didn’t have to shoot anybody. So this is that thing,” the 75-year-old said. “I’m glad I’m passing the test, because you never quite know what you’re going to do in that situation, or any situation.”

He added, “I like to think I made the right decision.”

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