All About 2026 Oscar Host Conan O'Brien's Wife, Liza Powel O'Brien

Conan O’Brien is back to host the 2026 Oscars, and his wife, Liza Powel O’Brien, will be supporting him at the show.

The pair, who walked the red carpet together before Conan’s 2026 Oscars opening monologue, have been married since 2002 and are proud parents to two children together.

Conan, who also hosted the 2025 Oscars, met Liza in 1999 while he was hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien and she was working at a New York City advertising firm — but more on their meet-cute later.

Though we’re used to seeing Conan in the limelight, Liza is a little less public so here is everything to know about the successful woman behind the renowned comedian.

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All About Conan O’Brien’s Wife, Liza Powel O’Brien

Conan O’Brien’s wife, Liza Powel O’Brien, is a playwright and podcast host. They married in 2002 and welcomed their daughter Neve in 2003, followed by their son Beckett in 2005.

Liza was born and raised near Seattle, Washington before moving to New York to pursue a bachelor’s degree at Vassar College and a master of fine arts degree (MFA) in fiction writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

She’s a Playwright Who Has Written Over 12 Plays

According to her website, Liza’s work has been staged at The Geffen Playhouse, Echo Theater Company, The Blank Theatre, Unscreened LA, Naked Angels LA, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, Hedgebrook, and Whidbey Island Center for the Arts.

One play, The Great Experiment, appears to be inspired by her alma mater, Vassar College. The play is set in 1865, four years after Vassar was established. “Freshman year means new horizons, questionable decisions, toxic friendship and epic culture clashes. At the radically progressive ‘first female college,’ it also marks the birth [of] a whole new era,” reads the play’s description.

Liza Hosts the ‘Significant Others’ Podcast

In 2022, Liza launched Significant Others, a podcast under her husband’s Team Coco network. The non-fiction podcast is focused on the people close to historical figures and, according to the show’s description, “tells the story of a talented, difficult and little-known individual who altered the destiny of their better-known partner, child, sibling or friend and impacted the world they left behind.”

“My very talented wife, Liza, has a new history podcast that I absolutely love,” Conan wrote on X to celebrate its launch.

Liza writes, hosts and narrates the episodes but is occasionally joined by celebrity guests including Jameela Jamil, Rita Wilson, Megan Mullally, Timothy Olyphant and, of course, her husband.

“I’m really interested, even before I was married to Conan, about what it was like for people who were married to the people we read about in history books,” Liza said of the inspiration behind Significant Others during a 2022 appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. “And as I started collecting more and more of [their stories] and asking people, ‘Is this anything that anyone else would be interested in besides me,’ Conan was one of the first people to say, ‘Absolutely, I would absolutely listen to that.'”

However, she doesn’t consider the podcast to be rooted in her own personal story. “For Conan, I don’t think I would be technically kind of significant other in terms of being his wife, but he has other people in the story of his career, who were pivotal. And that could be an interesting story,” Liza told Newsweek in 2022.

Liza & Conan Met Through His Talk Show

In 1999, Liza was working as a copywriter for the advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding when they were approached by Late Night With Conan O’Brien to film a segment for the show about working with their “worst advertisers.” When Conan visited her office, the pair connected instantly.

“Somewhere, in the vault at NBC, there’s footage of me literally falling for my wife on camera,” Conan said of their meeting during a 2012 interview with Piers Morgan, referring to the clip that was eventually uploaded to his official YouTube account in 2020.

Conan also recalled their first meeting on The Michelle Obama Podcast in September 2020. “I immediately start talking to her [Liza], and then I’m not even trying to be funny… I’m just trying to find out more about this woman.”

However, Liza revealed on her husband’s Inside Conan podcast in 2020 that Conan has never rewatched the clip. “He’s never watched it… he wants to remember it instead,” she. “Which is sweet, but it’s like … are you afraid you’re gonna reconsider?”

Liza & Conan Have Two Children

After getting married on Jan. 12, 2002, Liza and Conan welcomed daughter Neve, on Oct. 14, 2003.

Neve is currently studying at Yale University after graduating from the Los Angeles private girls school Marlborough in 2022. According to her LinkedIn, Neve is studying history and also serves as an illustrator for the Yale Daily News Magazine.

In 2020, Conan praised his daughter in a heartfelt post on X, writing, “The person who told me Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away was my daughter, Neve,” he wrote. “I was terribly sad, but also filled with gratitude that my daughter could see first hand how much intelligent, brave women can change the world.”

Conan and Liza welcomed a son, Beckett, on Nov. 9, 2005. Per his LinkedIn, Beckett has been studying computer engineering at Harvard University since 2024, which is his father’s alma mater.

In a February 2020 episode of “Dads: The Podcast,” Conan described his kids as “very smart” and “very good people.”

“My son is incredibly talented at tech and computer stuff and he just always has been,” he said. “I mean, he was literally, reprogramming my phone when he was 3. He could reach over and hit a few buttons and then suddenly, it wasn’t a phone anymore. It was a blender.”

Liza opened up about her experience raising teenagers during a 2020 interview with Ojai Playwrights Conference. “It’s sort of terrifying to watch them,” she said. “They have a lot of confidence in some ways and doubt in other ways, but they don’t know any of that yet, and to know it for them is very hard sometimes.”

Before you go, click here to see our favorite celebrity exes on the Oscars red carpet.