Jay Leno has been forced to take several heartbreaking steps as the caregiver for his wife.
According to TMZ, Mavis has been battling Alzheimer’s Disease. As a result, on Friday January 26, Leno filed for conservatorship over his wife of 44 years.
As TMZ reports, Leno has filed for conservatorship over his wife because of her diagnosis. Mavis can no longer care for herself on her own. Truly heartbreaking.
The couple have not yet openly shared details about Mavis’s battle with the disease that causes “a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills.” But our thoughts are with Jay and Mavis has they navigate through this difficult time.
For 44 years, Jay Leno and Mavis Leno have been in a loving relationship. And for the last 44 years, the comedian and philanthropist have chosen not to have children.
The reason for that may be surprising to some. In a 2014 interview with The Washington Post, Mavis revealed that the reason she and Jay don’t have children is entirely because of her.
The Very Interesting Reason Why Jay Leno and His Wife of 44 Years Mavis Leno Didn’t Have Kids
She admitted that she based her decision to not become a mother on what she saw while watching the show The Honeymooners. “I would see a young woman who was very attractive and a thousand times smarter, and she’s living in this little tenement hovel with her husband, Ralph, and then this Ed Norton, who has an even hotter wife,” she said.
The 1955 comedic sitcom Mavis is referring to following the lives of Ralph, Alice, and their friend, Ed and Trixie “as they get involved with various schemes in their day-to-day living.” As Mavis continued it was some of the rhetoric she would hear while watching that show that influenced her decision to never have kids.
“These men spend all their time talking about what a drag the wives are and asking how can they get away from them. It’s perfectly obvious the women are the ones trapped,” Mavis continued. And she even remembers telling her mom when she was just a child that she never plans on becoming a mother herself.
“I remember telling my mother when I was 7 or 8 that I was never going to get married or have children,” continued Mavis. “To me, this is the way women get caught.”
As it seems Jay respected Mavis’ decision not to start a family of their own after falling in love with her and paving their own path as a power couple. Has there ever been a show that influenced your life like this?
And Mavis seems to feel very lucky that she found such a good man in Jay who respected that very decision. After meeting Jay, who she calls “the single kindest human being I ever met,” Mavis changed her mind, about the whole marriage thing.
Jay Leno recently opened up about how he felt about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Leno explains that while the slap was uncalled for, he can understand having a rash reaction. However, it was after Will slapped rock and he had a second to compose himself, the decision to continue yelling at Rock worries Leno.
“To me, the thing that’s most disturbing wasn’t the slap, because he was kind of smirking after he slapped [Rock],” Leno told the Palm Beach Daily News on Friday. “It was the yelling of the obscenities. Then you go, ‘Whoa. What’s going on here?’ This is real anger.”