Jay Leno has filed for a conservatorship over his wife of four decades, Mavis Leno, Us Weekly confirms.
Jay, 73, filed a request over Mavis’ estate on Friday, January 26, according to court documents obtained by Us. According to TMZ, Mavis, 77, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, which was the foundation of Jay’s legal motion.
Neither Jay nor Mavis have publicly addressed the conservatorship, of which there will be a hearing in April, or Mavis’ reported Alzheimer’s battle. Us Weekly has reached out for comment.
The talk show legend and Mavis have been married for nearly 44 years.
“We have a great time. You have to marry a normal person,” Jay gushed during a September 2023 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “Guys say [to me] all the time, ‘I met this girl, she’s crazy but the sex is unbelievable.’ I go to them, ‘You’re right, but when the sex is over, she’s still crazy. Now, you have 23 hours of crazy until [the] good-crazy hour comes back.’”
Jay went on to share his go-to marriage advice for a lasting relationship.
“I always [say], ‘Marry your conscience,’” he told host Kelly Clarkson. “Marry the person you wish you could be, who is kind and maybe whatever fault you have, doesn’t have those faults. That’s worked out for me, so to me, I married the perfect person. It worked out good.”
Jay and Mavis got married in 1980 after initially meeting at a comedy club.
“It was in January — I don’t remember the day. But at the time I thought, ‘Holy s—t! That comedian is gorgeous!’” Mavis recalled to the Los Angeles Times in September 2014. “I had gone to the Comedy Store with my girlfriend because I was writing comedy with some partners. Friends kept saying, ‘You have to hang out at the Comedy Store and the Improv. You’ll meet people who can give you jobs.’ The first time I went, they sat us front row center — that means you’re this far from the comic. And there was Jay.”
She continued at the time, “I needed to go to the ladies’ room. What I didn’t know was in the Comedy Store back then, that area was the only place for the comedians to hang out. So when I came out of the bathroom, he said, ‘Are you that girl in front?’ And I said, ‘Yes, that was me.’”
Decades later, Jay suffered severe burns across his body after a 2022 gasoline fire broke out while he was fixing up a car in a garage. Jay was taken to the hospital with Mavis by his side after making a pit stop at home to get his wife.
“My wife doesn’t drive anymore and I didn’t want her stuck and not knowing what was going on,” Jay said during a December 2022 appearance on the Today show. “It just seemed like the right thing to do, and I think it was.”
