In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld asked out his now wife. She'd just returned from her honeymoon.

When Jerry Seinfeld and Jessica Sklar started dating in 1998, the gossip mags were all over it.

“Master of whose domain?” asked People cheekily. 

It’s no wonder the new couple was such big news. Jessica had been married for less than two months when Jerry first asked her out, and her husband, Eric Nederlander, didn’t hesitate to savage her publicly.

“I was manipulated, misled, and completely caught off guard by Jessica’s infidelity,” Nederlander told the New York Post. “Jerry and Jessica have no respect for decent values. They deserve each other. I’m going on with my life.”

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Even Jessica’s former mother-in-law, Caren Nederlander, got stuck into her. 

“Jessica, like Monica Lewinsky, became starstruck,” she told TV Guide. 

But the true story of Jerry and Jessica’s relationship is a little more complicated. Back when Jessica got married for the first time, she was 26 years old and working as a publicist for Tommy Hilfiger. Nederlander was a Broadway producer, from a wealthy family who owned a string of theatres (and was part of the New York Yankees baseball team). 

It was a huge, lavish wedding, with a Broadway theme, and the newlyweds honeymooned in Italy. 

But Jessica told Vogue in 2004 that she’d decided to end her five-year relationship with Nederlander even before the wedding. She said they’d been to counselling, which had “clearly highlighted” the differences between them.

“But I still clung to the unrealistic hope that things would improve,” she added. “My denial led to a wedding that should have never taken place. Immediately after I returned from our honeymoon, I knew we had made a terrible mistake.”

Jessica told The New York Times in 2007 that she started moving her things from Nederlander’s apartment into her grandmother’s place just two days after she got back from her honeymoon. That was July 1998. In early August, she met Jerry – whose incredibly successful sitcom Seinfeld had just come to an end – at a Reebok gym, while she was filling up her water bottle.

“He attempted to make me laugh, and I was really not interested in being entertained at that moment,” she said. 

But when she walked away, Jerry followed her. He tried to make her laugh again, and this time it worked. 

Jerry Seinfeld and then Jessica Sklar, 1999. Image: Getty. 

Jerry invited Jessica to the taping of a TV special two nights later and she agreed. But she told him she’d just broken up with someone and didn’t think it was the right time for her to get involved with someone new. 

“I told him the story and he looked at me with such compassion and said, ‘Give me a hug.’”

Jessica says Jerry told her he’d done the exact same thing, “except he cut his engagement off before he got married”.

A year earlier, Jerry had split up with Shoshanna Lonstein. They’d been together for four years, after meeting in a park when Lonstein was 17.  

A rumour that Jerry and Jessica were dating appeared in the Daily News the same month that they met. But Jessica was quoted as saying there was “no romantic interest whatsoever”.

Jessica told The New York Times she felt “overwhelmed and under tremendous pressure” when she was contacted by gossip columnists. 

“I denied the truth, naïvely trying to protect everyone involved, including Eric, from the pain of the break-up and from the embarrassment of public humiliation.”

But before long, Jessica was divorced. She and Jerry stopped hiding their relationship and started being spotted out together – shopping, cuddling, going on holidays. The backlash against her was fierce. It wasn’t just Nederlander and his mother attacking her.

“This insignificantly featured girl was lucky enough to have a wealthy, powerful Jew break with stereotype and offer her the last name of Nederlander,” an opinion piece in the Newark Star-Ledger trumpeted. “But being more ambitious, the newlywed started timing her workouts at New York’s posh Reebok Club with Jerry’s...”

Jessica Sklar with her new engagement ring from Jerry Seinfeld, 1999. Image: Getty. 

Jerry and Jessica got married, in a quiet ceremony, on Christmas Day, 1999, with less than 40 guests. 

"It was very funny and very beautiful and they're obviously very in love," one of the wedding guests, Mario Joyner, told the New York Daily News.

A year later, Jerry and Jessica welcomed their daughter, Sascha, followed by sons Julian and Shepherd. 

Jessica told Parents Magazine in 2020 that Jerry “wasn’t a natural” when the kids were born, and he wasn’t immediately “pushing strollers and carrying babies”. 

“He jokes that it took him a good 10 years to warm up," Jessica added. “But Jerry’s strength is now, with our three teenagers. He’s patient with them.” 

Even if Jerry wasn’t a “natural” parent at first, his family has always meant the world to him. 

“If it wasn’t for Jess and the kids, I’d really blow my brains out,” he told Vogue. “Jessica saved my life. She gave me something to care about.”

Soon after giving birth to Sascha, Jessica established the Good+ Foundation to support low-income parents and caregivers. So far, the foundation has donated around $US50 million worth of children’s goods. Jessica has also written five cookbooks.

 Jerry Seinfeld and Jessica Seinfeld , 2022. Image: Getty. 

Jerry, meanwhile, has gone on to more success with the series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. 

Jessica’s former husband Eric Nederlander has turned up in the news quite a few times over the years. In 2004 he got married again, to psychologist Lindsey Kupferman. 

But not long after their daughter was born, a judge issued Kupferman an order of protection against Nederlander, “based upon a finding of danger to person or property and domestic violence”. Nederlander denied any wrongdoing. 

In 2011, according to the New York Post, Nederlander was arrested when his girlfriend Nancy Okun alleged he’d smashed her face into a Plexiglas partition in a taxi, then punched her in the face and shoved her into walls. According to the Post, Nederlander was charged with assault and harassment, but sources said Okun declined to prosecute. Nederlander was allowed to plead to disorderly conduct. 

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Jessica and Jerry celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in 2019. That year, they spoke to People about the secrets to a happy marriage. 

“He’s the most incredible communicator and so he’s better at this relationship than I am,” Jessica said. 

She added that the two of them were “not co-dependent”.

“We both have a very strong work ethic and a huge passion for our work,” she said. “We both want to raise normal children because we both grew up in middle-class homes, and so we know that it’s really important for our kids to see us working really hard at work we love.”

Jerry said that every night was “date night” for them. 

“We just like to hang out and it’s not like a big deal for us to go to a restaurant. It’s just about being the same room for us. We love being in the same room.”

Feature Image: Getty.

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