Rise to Fame
Jimmy Kimmel, born James Christian Kimmel on November 13, 1967, in Brooklyn, was the eldest of three children in a Catholic family. He was raised in Las Vegas and attended high school there, where he first considered a career in entertainment. A friend suggested he should be on the radio, and his uncle sent him tapes of Howard Stern, who was then on local radio. This sparked Kimmel’s interest in the field.
He started doing a half-hour Sunday night talk show on college radio station KUNV, which excited him more than anything he had done before. He went through the Yellow Pages to find people who seemed interesting and would goof on them, but they were so excited to be on the air that they didn’t notice.
In 1989, he landed his first paying job alongside Kent Voss as morning drive co-host of The Me and Him Show at KZOK-FM in Seattle, but they were fired a year later. They were also reportedly fired from their next job in Tampa, Florida. According to Variety, Kimmel eventually landed his own show at a station in Palm Springs, which led to a morning show in Arizona and finally LA’s KROQ radio station, where he spent five years as ‘Jimmy the sports guy’ on the Kevin & Bean show.
Despite never planning to get into television, he started writing scripts for free for the duo, who were also on-air announcers at Fox. It led to him receiving a call from Fox asking if he wanted to help out. He became known as ‘Jimmy the Fox Guy’ and soon started appearing on other shows.
From ‘Promo Guy’ to Late Night Icon
In 1997, Kimmel began co-hosting the quiz show Win Ben Stein’s Money on US cable TV channel Comedy Central. At the same time, he began working on comedy sketch program The Man Show. His journey from “promo guy” to late-night icon continued with the creation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003.
The show was the ABC’s first attempt at a traditional late-night talk show since the 1980s and initially struggled to win an audience, with some ABC affiliates refusing to air it. Despite its name, it has not been aired live since its first year after an expletive made its way on air. Instead, it is taped in front of an audience at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre (ECEC) in Hollywood.
There were also controversies early on. The ABC pulled an episode in 2004 during the NBA Finals in Detroit after Kimmel joked fans would “burn the city of Detroit down” if they lost. There was also a long-running gag that involved Matt Damon coming on the show, only for Kimmel to tell the actor they were out of time for their interview.
A decade after it first went on air, the show moved to the 11:35pm timeslot, where it remains. Around that time, a Kids Table segment, in which a child suggested killing Chinese people, led to protests and even a White House petition. Then in 2020, Kimmel apologised after skits he was part of at The Man Show resurfaced showing him in blackface. He was also criticised for racial slurs he once used when imitating Snoop Dogg and for comments he had made to Megan Fox.
Despite the controversies, he has become a highly-paid entertainer, earning a reported $22 million a year just from hosting his show.
Life Off-Screen
Kimmel has been married twice. His first wife was Gina Maddy, whom he met while they were at college together in Arizona. They married in 1988 and welcomed two children, daughter Katherine in 1991, and son Kevin in 1993, before they divorced in 2002.
That year, he started a relationship with comedian Sarah Silverman. They dated for six years before splitting up in 2009. That same year Kimmel began dating Jimmy Kimmel Live! co-head writer Molly McNearney. They became engaged in 2012 and married the following July. They have two children, Jane, who was born in July 2014, and Billy, who arrived in April 2017.
Within hours of his birth, Billy was diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect, tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) with pulmonary atresia, and underwent open heart surgery when he was three days old. He has since undergone two more surgeries. The last operation took place in 2024, and Kimmel took to Instagram afterwards, writing about the experience.
Kimmel became a grandfather in May last year when Katherine gave birth to a little girl. Billy’s health battles led Kimmel to become vocal about protecting the US Government’s Affordable Care Act – similar to our Medicare – and he has been scathing of the Trump administration’s threats to dismantle it.
The Trump Feud
Kimmel’s famed opening monologues became more political around the time Donald Trump was announced as the Republican candidate for the US Presidency in 2015. By the time Trump took office in early 2017, after winning the 2016 election, Kimmel was critical of many of his policies, especially around health.
“It’s about getting rid of Obamacare, which he hates, primarily because Obama’s name is on it. At this point he would sign anything if it meant getting rid of Obamacare,” Kimmel said at the time.
By March 2024, when Trump was no longer president, the war of words had become so heated that Trump would often take to social media to criticise Kimmel, even when he was in the middle of hosting the Oscars.
It prompted Kimmel to share his ‘review’ live on air. “Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars? His opening was that of a less-than-average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be,” Kimmel read. He then replied, “I’m surprised you’re still up, isn’t it past your jail time?” – a response to Trump’s then-legal battles.
Then in 2025, after the cancellation of another late night show hosted by Stephen Colbert, Trump again turned his sights on Kimmel. “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented late-night sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, [Jimmy] Fallon will be gone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding he hoped he “played a major part” in their demise.
During his opening monologue on September 15, 2025, Kimmel commented about the assassination of right-wing commentator and conservation group founder Charlie Kirk. As a result, other right wing commentators and the head of the Federal Communications Commission called for retaliatory action. An ABC affiliate said it would not broadcast the show on its stations, leading the Disney-owned ABC to announce it would be “pre-empted indefinitely”, causing Trump to gloat.
News the show had been reinstated led Trump to again explode, even admitting the White House was involved in the original decision and threatening legal action. “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!” he wrote.
In typical Jimmy Kimmel fashion, he did not back down, using his first two shows to again go after Trump. “He tried his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show,” he said. “That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”
Months later, an episode that aired on April 23 attracted the attention of First Lady Melania Trump. Kimmel had performed a “light roast” in the spirit of the then-upcoming White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he referred to Melania as an “expectant widow”.
