Legendary Host Johnny Carson Had a Secretive and Stormy Love Life

With his effortless charm and scrubbed Midwestern good looks, TV host Johnny Carson enchanted American television audiences for 30 years on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The NBC late-night talk show ran from 1962 to 1992, receiving six Emmy Awards as well as the Television Academy’s Governor’s Award in 1980 and a Peabody Award in 1985.

Often hailed as the “king of late-night“, Carson reigned as one of the most influential entertainers in show business (remember the time he caused the toilet paper shortage of 1973?) But for all the fame and glory of his on-screen persona, the talk show host was notoriously secretive with his personal life.

The television host attributed his marital woes to his mom, Ruth Carson. “She’s the toughest son of a bitch of them all,” Carson reportedly once said of his mother. “There is no goddamn way to please that woman. She’s Lady Macbeth! My marriages failed because she f – – – ed me up!”

Whether or not his mother was to blame, Carson did have a tumultuous love life, undergoing three marriages troubled by conflict and infidelity (plus one that ended happily). Here’s the run-down on all four: Carson married Jody Wolcott, his first wife, in 1948. The couple had three sons: Christopher, Cory, and Richard. Their relationship was notoriously troubled and marred by abuse and infidelity. Jody filed for divorce in 1959.

Within months after Carson and his first ex-wife divorced in 1963, the talk show host married his second wife, a model named Joanne Copeland.

While they were married, Joanne reportedly had an affair with Frank Gifford. When Johnny found out, he famously went on a drinking bender with his co-host Ed McMahon. The marriage between Johnny and Joanne Carson lasted a little over a decade and ended with a similarly contentious divorce. That same year, Carson married former model Joanna Holland in a surprise wedding. Carson and Joanna were together for 11 years before their divorce in 1983.

Carson was single from 1983 to 1987 before marrying his fourth wife, Alexis Maas, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native and former stock brokerage employee. The couple lived a luxurious Hollywood lifestyle in several massive homes, including a 16-bedroom oceanfront mansion in Malibu and another mansion in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California.

Alexis and the NBC host remained together until Carson’s passing at age 79 in 2005. Family members reported that his death was due to respiratory failure caused by emphysema.

After her husband’s death, Alexis has remained largely out of the spotlight. Her most recent appearance was in the documentary, Johnny Carson: King of Late Night.