Johnny Carson's 4 Wives: A Look Back at the Late TV Host's Marriages (and Why He Said He Never Gave 'As Much' to His Relationships as to His Show)

Johnny Carson, beloved host of The Tonight Show, famously joked about his difficulties in love, casting the blame, at one point, on his most iconic role.

“If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to The Tonight Show, I’d probably have a hell of a marriage,” he once said, per PEOPLE.

Prior to becoming a household name as a pillar of late-night television, Carson married Joan "Jody" Wolcott in 1949 after they met as students at the University of Nebraska. The pair welcomed three sons and split in 1963.

The year after Carson took on the mantle of The Tonight Show in 1962, he met and married model and TV host Joanne Copeland, who encouraged him to pursue the host role full-time. She and Carson divorced in 1972. The comedian married model Joanna Holland that year, and the pair lived together in New York with her son until The Tonight Show’s move to California placed a strain on their marriage.

Carson and Holland split in 1985, and he married his fourth and final wife, Alexis Maas, in 1987. Producer George Schlatter told PEOPLE in 2005 that "the real love of [Carson's] life was Alex."

Carson retired from The Tonight Show in May of 1992 and lived quietly with Maas until his death 20 years ago from emphysema at age 79.

Here’s a look back at Johnny Carson’s four wives.

Joan "Jody" Morrill Wolcott

Carson married Joan "Jody" Morrill Wolcott on Oct. 3, 1949, according to their wedding announcement in The Lincoln Star. The couple met at the University of Nebraska where she was a member of the Phi Beta Phi sorority.

Carson and Wolcott welcomed three children together during their relationship: Richard, Christopher and Cory.

In the 2024 biography Carson the Magnificent, authors Bill Zehme and Mike Thomas claimed that Carson’s marriage to Wolcott was tumultuous. “There would be boozy rows aplenty — some in front of other couples — or long silent stews of resentment or recrimination or shame," they wrote, per Fox News.

Carson and Wolcott divorced in 1963, after 14 years of marriage, following his appointment as host of The Tonight Show in October 1962 and subsequent rise to fame.

The couple’s child, photographer Richard, died on June 24, 1991, at the age of 39, following a car accident in California, according to The New York Times.

Joanne Copeland

Carson married model and television host Joanne Copeland in 1963.

The couple had their first date in 1960 when she was working as a stewardess for Pan American World Airways. Their paths had already crossed, though — Copeland told The New York Times that her father first met Carson in a jazz club and attempted to set the two up.

At first, Copeland was skeptical that they could make a relationship work as she was a television host in her own right for a different network. According to The New York Times, she first hosted an early 1960s game show called Video Village. When he tried to set them up, she told her father, “He’s daytime on ABC? I work for CBS. I don’t associate with people on daytime TV.” However, it wasn’t long before the pair became inseparable.

Copeland and Carson began their courtship at the same time he was beginning his tenure on The Tonight Show. Copeland loved Carson's first tapes when he was standing in as host and encouraged him to take on the position full-time.

In a 2007 interview with The New York Times, she recalled Carson’s misgivings about taking on his most famed role. “He said, ‘It frightens me to take it, because I think I might lose you,’ ” said Copeland. “I said: ‘Are you crazy? You couldn’t lose me if you tried.’ ”

However, Copeland did eventually credit the show with playing a part in ending their marriage. She claimed to The New York Times that Carson expected her to act as a conduit between him and the staff. “I took the brunt of everything,” she said. Copeland was also quoted in Carson the Magnificent speaking about Carson's struggles with alcohol.

The pair divorced in 1972 and Copeland later recalled Carson joking about their separation. “After our divorce he said, ‘She left me with a hassock and a hair net,’ ” she said. “I’m going to remember that forever.”

The former CBS host left the marriage with something much more valuable, though: the first recordings of him standing in as the host of The Tonight Show, the tapes that Copeland had fallen in love with a decade prior.

In 2007, two years after Carson’s death, Copeland found the tapes and released them as the Johnny Carson Show on DVD allowing audiences a peek into Carson’s early years while he workshopped the hosting format that would go on to define American late-night television.

After their split, Copeland became the host of her own syndicated show, Joanne Carson’s V.I.P.’s. She also pursued further education, earning a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry and physiology. She went on to marry and divorce Richard Rever, and had a very close friendship with the author Truman Capote. Copeland was portrayed by Molly Ringwald in FX’s 2024 series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

She later told PEOPLE that Carson remained true to his roots, being “a little boy from the Midwest with impeccable manners.” Following Carson’s death on Jan. 23, 2005, Copeland described her feelings about his loss. “The pain of this is to the bone. To the bone,” she said.

Copeland spent her later years as a holistic therapist and died on May 8, 2015.

Joanna Holland

Holland and Carson married in 1972, the same year that he and Copeland divorced.

The pair met in 1971 at the 21 Club in New York, where he later recalled to PEOPLE he was "flirting like a sophomore.” Holland was one of New York’s highest-paid models at the time and had been divorced from former World Backgammon Champion Tim Holland since 1966. When they met, she was living with her son Tim in a small apartment. Carson and Holland spent their first date celebrating his 46th birthday, after which, he proceeded to call her every day at 4:30 pm for a year.

But, the pair ran into trouble when The Tonight Show was moved from New York to California. Holland was a die-hard New Yorker and didn’t want to make the move, but Carson allegedly demanded it. “You’re coming to California with Tim and we’re going to be married," she recalled him saying.

The pair moved to Burbank, Calif., where they threw dinner parties and screenings with a close-knit group of friends. Holland didn’t have the keen interest in Carson’s work that Copeland had. “I don’t have that much to say about Johnny’s work,” she said. “It’s not my place."

However, she, too, claimed to have experienced the effects of Carson’s tumultuous relationship with alcohol. Holland spoke about Carson’s drinking in the biography Carson the Magnificent.

In a 1979 interview with 60 Minutes, Carson admitted to his temper when drinking. "And when I did drink — rather than a lot of people who become fun-loving, gregarious, and love everybody — I would go just the opposite," he said. "And it would happen just like that!"

The couple divorced in 1985.

Alexis Maas

A few years before his retirement from The Tonight Show in May 1992, Carson married one last time to Alexis Maas in 1987.

“As much as he loved that show and loved jokes. I think the real love of his life was Alex," Schlatter told PEOPLE in 2005.

Maas and Carson allegedly met in Malibu, when he saw her on the beach. They loved to travel, with Carson reportedly taking on a love of language later in life, learning Swahili for trips to Africa.

According to Judge William Hogoboom, who oversaw one of Carson's divorces and his last marriage, the host's relationship with Maas was a quiet affair.

“He wanted to avoid publicity. There was nobody at the wedding—just his brother, Dick, my wife and me outside his home in Malibu, overlooking the Pacific Ocean," he told PEOPLE in 1992. "They had a speaker phone hookup, so the bride’s father and mother—on the East Coast, I believe—could hear. Her father gave her away. Johnny didn’t muff his lines. Oh, yes, they kissed.”

The two lived together in California until his death from emphysema in 2005 at age 79.

Read the original article on People