Andy Richter Met His Second Wife in an Unconventional Way After Going Through a Painful Divorce
Conan O'Brien's longtime sidekick Andy Richter has opened up about finding love after going through a painful divorce from his wife of 25 years. And because celebrities, in many ways, are just like us, the 57-year-old found his second wife on a dating app, of all places.
Richter appears on the latest episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's on Me podcast, where the Modern Family star asked him where he met his wife Jennifer Herrera, whom he married last June in a ceremony officiated by O'Brien at the couple's West Hollywood home.
"We met on Hinge. We met online. It was my first real experience, uh, doing that," Richter explained, noting that splitting up with his ex-wife was the worst thing he had ever been through. "We'd been together for 27 years and married for 25. So it was just, it was awful. And moving out of the house that I lived at with my kids was just the absolute worst part."
The comedian said that he had asked for the advice of his younger sister who had also been divorced, and she told him that it may take awhile before he felt settled enough to get serious about anyone. "I was like, 'What? I don't have time for that!'" he remembered thinking at the time.
"But she was right. It took a while," he continued. "Well, it was exciting in some ways because it was like just the notion of something new. But yeah, I mean, it was nerve wracking. It was kind of terrifying. And, you know, you feel like an old shoe."
When asked if Hinge was the first dating app he had tried, Richter admitted that he briefly dipped his toe into Raya, the "celebrity" dating app, on the advice of his friend, comedian Nikki Glaser.
"She said, 'I'll recommend you.' And I said, 'OK.' And I signed up and I was in no position to self examine and like, write cute little things about myself, 'cause I just felt like I'm an old shoe, you know, like I'm garbage," he recalled. "What kind of music do I like? Garbage music. And you had to pick a piece of music and everything I plugged in was just too old for it. It was like, I couldn't find anything. I mean, like, Aretha Franklin or I don't know."
However, after picking out photos and getting it set up, Richter says he bailed after about a half hour and deleted the whole thing. "I felt like if you went by Raya, you would think that, in Los Angeles at any given time, there were like a hundred women in their 40s leaping in the surf joyously. Just like, this is not my crowd."
Finally giving Hinge a try, Richter said he met his wife fairly quickly. After going on a couple of dates he invited her to his house to cook dinner. "And then I just started hanging out at her house and I met her daughter and I started finding myself driving home feeling very, very happy," he said.
When he finally came to the conclusion that she was the one, Richter says a big deal was the realization that she didn't "need" him.
"She has her own business. She has a career that she's been involved in for years and years, does well, is well respected in our community ... had a baby on her own," he explained. "I never felt any kind of pressure to behave a certain way or be anybody other than myself. And I never, I didn't have that with other people that I dated."
Richter and Herrera announced their engagement in November 2022 and by all accounts, have been going strong ever since. So for all the singles out there experiencing dating app fatigue, apparently there are some happy endings out there.
