Jimmy Kimmel's 4 Kids: Everything He's Said About Parenting

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo: Rebecca Sapp/Getty

Jimmy Kimmelknows how to find humor in parenthood.

Kimmel and his first wife, Gina Maddy, share two adult children: daughter Katie, 33, and son Kevin, 31. (The former couple were married from 1988 to 2003.) Kimmelwed for a second timein 2013 toMolly McNearney, an executive producer and co-head writer on his talk show,Jimmy Kimmel Live!The couple also have two children together: daughter Jane, 10, and son Billy, 7.

In 2022, Kimmell told PEOPLE that Jane and Billy have him wrapped around their little fingers. “They are very funny,” he said. “Well, they have no respect for me whatsoever. They make fun of me.They’re just goofballs.”

Learn all about Jimmy Kimmel’s four children — Katie, Kevin, Jane and Billy — below.

Katie Kimmel, 33

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Kimmel and his first wife welcomed their first child — a daughter named Katharine — on Aug. 28, 1991, in Tampa, Florida. The talk-show host was just 24 years old at the time and the young parents struggled to make ends meet,Kimmel later recalled toVulture. When Katie was born, Kimmel lost his job working in morning radio in Tampa and found a new one in Palm Springs, California.

“We moved across the country, and I would work from four in the morning till around 11 in the morning, and at the time my ex-wife worked too,” Kimmel explained. “So I’d pick Katie up from daycare as quickly as I could, because we couldn’t afford the $5 an hour to keep her there longer.”

He added, “I’d have her all day till 6 or 6:30, when my ex-wife got home. That was a hard schedule. I was exhausted all the time … I used to beg Katie to go to sleep, almost in tears, just so I could take a nap.”

Kimmel was also candid about the stresses he felt when Katie was young. “Most of the pressure I felt with Katie came from me being a 25-year-old guy who had to keep the family afloat,” he said. “It was not easy.”

As Katie has grown into an adult herself, Kimmel has been supportive of her own creative career path. She received her BFA from The School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, moved to California to work as an artist after graduation and has been selling her own home goods, apparel and artwork since 2017. That same year, Kimmel defended his daughter’s work when heaccused the clothing brand Reformation of copying her designs.

Shortly after her 30th birthday, Katiewed her longtime partner Will Logsdonin September 2021. Kimmel made an appearance onThe Ellen DeGeneres Showshortly before the ceremony and opened up about what it felt like to be the father of the bride.

“She actually turned 30 two weeks ago, which is strange to have a 30-year-old daughter,” Kimmel said to DeGeneres. “And she is getting married this weekend, as a matter of fact, which is a big deal.”

Kimmel also said he approves of his daughter’s new husband. “I’ll tell you, the guy is great,” he shared. “His name is Will and he’s a great guy. And if he wasn’t, he’d be dead right now … That’s how we operate in my family.”

Kevin Kimmel, 31

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On Sept. 19, 1993, Kimmel’s second child — a son named Kevin — was born. Kevin, along with his older sister Katie, grew up prior to Kimmel’s major success as a comedian and television host.

“I didn’t make any money when I was in radioand I got fired a lot,” Kimmel told PEOPLE about his experience as a young parent. “It’s stressful enough to get fired and have to move to another town, but when you have little kids, it’s even more stressful.”

But Kevin — who appears to have inherited his father’s sense of humor — has joked about his modest childhood on Instagram. Heposted a photo of himselfholding a tabloid with the headline “Hollywood’s Richest Kids” in August 2021. The caption reads: “I’m so f- - - - - - embarrassed rn, I didn’t even make the top 10.”

Though Kimmel’s work schedule may have been less busy when Katie and Kevin were growing up, it was still a struggle to spend quality time with his two older children — purely out of stress and exhaustion. The late-night host toldVulturein 2017 that he didn’t miss those early, tiring days.

“You want to have quality time with them — it’s much harder for parents who are with their kids 24/7 to enjoy that time together,” Kimmel confessed.

As adults, Kevin — who works in television doing sound and as a production assistant — and Kimmel are able to spend more of that quality time together. Kevin has posted photos on his Instagram of the twoplaying baseball,fishingandsitting courtside at NBA games. Kevin married his wife Nicole athis father’s fly fishing lodgein Idaho in September 2022.

Jane Kimmel, 10

Jimmy Kimmel Instagram

Kimmel’s second wife, McNearney, gave birth to their first child together — a daughter named Jane — on July 10, 2014, in Los Angeles. Kimmelannounced the birth via Twitter, and thenspoke more in-depth about Jane’s arrivalonJimmy Kimmel Live!.

“We had a little girl, we named her after my grandmother — her name is Grandma Kimmel,” Jimmy shared in his opening monologue. “She weighed 6 lbs., 1 oz. at birth. Twenty inches long, just above the legal limit — sometimes, they make you throw them back.”

The late-night host added, “I’ve been taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 pictures of her a day. She thinks I’m with TMZ now.”

Even throughout toddlerhood with Jane, Kimmel alwaysfocused on the positive side of parenting. “Everything’s great about it — even the bad things are great,” he told PEOPLE in 2016 when Jane was 2 years old. “When I come home, the level of excitement is something that you really can only get from a pet. She goes crazy.”

Kimmel even managed to find the humor in potty training Jane. “She’ll only go to the potty on the trampoline, which is insane,” he shared. “But that’s her. She’s a weird kid.”

Jane has since grown to share her father’s interests in politics and comedy, even as a young girl. During the 2020 Presidential election, Kimmel revealed to DeGeneres that 6-year-oldJane was just as invested in the outcomeas he was.

“My daughter actually, my daughter is 6 years old, and she was watching. We had CNN on for like four days in a row,” the proud dad said. “She’s very interested in what’s going on and she feels like she has a stake in it.”

As for her comedy skills, Jane put them on display withher Father’s Day card for Kimmelin 2021. “Happy… Farters-Day” Jane wrote on the outside of the card. She illustrated her point with a drawing of a person’s buttocks and an angry green cloud. Kimmel shared Jane’s artistic creation — and funny phrasing — on Instagram. “My 6 yr old daughter Jane might have a future at Hallmark,” Kimmeljoked in the captionof his post.

Kimmel continues to share adorable stories about Jane as she grows up and hits more milestones. In September 2022, the comedian revealed that his youngest daughterhad received her first visit from the tooth fairy— and it was a lucrative one.

“I forgot and I had to throw a much too large $20 bill under her bed because that’s all I had,” Kimmel told PEOPLE exclusively. “We had to explain, ‘Oh, it’s the first tooth. Don’t expect $20 every time.’ "

He added, “My daughter is very precocious.”

Billy Kimmel, 7

“Basically, the pulmonary valve was completely blocked and he has a hole in the wall between the left and right sides of his heart,” the comedian explained.

Even in the emotional monologue, Kimmel was still able to crack a joke. “Poor kid. Not only did he get a bad heart, he got my face,” he said.

Since his birth, Billy has undergone two more open-heart surgeries —one at 7 months oldandanother at age 7.

“This weekend, our boy Billy had his third (of three, we hope) open heart surgery. We went into this experience with a lot of optimism and nearly as much fear and came out with a new valve inside a happy, healthy kid,” Kimmel wrote on Instagram in May 2024.

Over the years, Kimmel has taken each birthday to expresshow “grateful” he and McNearney are — not only for Billy’s healthbut also for the nurses and doctors who treated him.

Kimmel has also becomeincreasingly outspoken about affordable healthcaresince Billy’s birth and surgeries (which the 7-year-oldhas “almost no interest” in learning about, Kimmel says).

Kimmel hopes that Billy remains in that same state of blissful ignorance as he continues to grow up. “My problems and my worries shouldn’t be his problems or his worries,” the late-night host said. “I think he’s going to have enough to worry about growing up with this questionable heart in his body, andI just want him to worry about hitting a home run in Little League.”

In October 2023, Kimmel and McNearney surprised Billy and Jane whenOlivia Rodrigohitched a ride with them on their way to school. Billy and Rodrigo thensang along to his favorite songof hers: “Get Him Back.”

“He wants to get him back for you. What do you want to do when you get him back?” McNearney asked Billy. “Punch him in the penis,” he responded, much to the pop star’s amusement.

source: people.com