Chelsea Handler is reflecting on her former relationship with Jo Koy with the benefit of hindsight.
Appearing on Brooke Shields’ “Now What?” podcast this week, Handler said she was caught off guard by her split from Koy, noting that the “seminal” relationship had even shifted her stance on marriage.
“I really believed that this was my guy,” she recalled. “I thought: ‘Oh my God, I won.’ Like I got everything. I have my career, I have respect, I have my family, I have so many friends, I have all of these things. And then I thought this was gonna be the person I spend my life with.”
The former late night host didn’t point to a specific incident as the impetus for the couple’s split, explaining that she and Koy had discussed marriage “at length, because it was important to him.” Still, she went on to note, “Towards the end of the relationship, it just became clear that this was not my person.”
“No matter how much I loved this person — and I loved him so much — I was not going to abandon myself,” she said. “I am not going to change the way that I behave in order to make you feel more comfortable. I’m not doing that, and I had to walk away from something that I really believed was gonna be a forever relationship. So that was difficult.”
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Handler and Koy, a fellow comedian, announced their break up in July, shortly after recording a video they’d planned to unveil on social media in honor of their one-year anniversary weeks later.
“It’s a comfort to know that I am still loved and love this man the way the sun loves the moon and the moon loves the sun. YOUR PERSON IS COMING,” Handler wrote on Instagram at the time. “So, please continue to root for both of us, because you never know what life will bring.”
Koy shared similar sentiments in his own post, noting that the pair will “always remain great friends and will always have love for one another.”
Handler later opened up further about the split in an appearance on the “We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle” podcast, revealing that she and Koy had been trying to work things out in therapy prior to ending their relationship.
“I was willing to do so much bending, but there’s a line. And I’m very proud of myself that I didn’t let myself cross that line,” she said, adding that she feels “optimistic about the future now.”