Jon Stewart’s first date with his wife was nearly a total bust, but “two shots” were all it took for things to do a 180.
“When she gets nervous, she gets very quiet and when I get nervous, I get the opposite,” the comedian said of his wife, Tracey McShane, on the “Strike Force Five” podcast.
Stewart recalled polishing off “two giant burritos, hers and mine,” during their first date at a Mexican joint.
He said she was so quiet that he was convinced she “not only didn’t like me, but found me repulsive.”
“I apparently nauseated her, she would not touch her food, so I threw it all down,” he said.
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Before giving up on the evening, Stewart suggested they stop in at a nearby bar.
“Two shots and she relaxes,” he recalled. “Once she started talking and how funny and smart she was? Oh my god.”
Stephen Colbert, one of the podcast’s hosts, said he’d texted McShane to get her version of events.
“I think when he got a few drinks in me, it got me to finally speak,” she wrote back, according to Colbert.
Stewart said he asked McShane to be his girlfriend then and there.
“I wrote her a note, as sophisticated as I was at that time,” the comedian said. “It said ‘Would you be my girlfriend?’ And I gave her only two boxes that she could check: One was ‘yes’ and the other was ‘of course.’”
Stewart has shared in the past that he and his wife met after they were set up on a blind date. They have been married since 2000.
The “Strike Force Five” podcast is hosted by five late night TV hosts whose shows are on hiatus due to the Hollywood writers strike: Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Seth Meyers.
The comedians started the podcast to raise money for their out-of-work staffers.