Carson Daly is one of the people who defined early-aughts MTV as the host of TRL. When the VJ
graduated to a serious career as a late-night TV host, he met his wife Siri Pinter, a woman who had
not yet entered the tabloid's lexicon. Here are some of the strange things about Daly's marriage.
Time heals all wounds, and that really rings true for Carson Daly.
Though the star has since settled down with Pinter, he's managed to
stay friends with his ex, and that says a lot considering the way they broke up.
In the late '90s, Daly dated Jennifer Love Hewitt for a year right at the height of her Party of
Five fame. She reportedly dumped him through her publicist, and he ended up finding out
about their split when he tuned into The Howard Stern Show. According to E! News, he told Hewitt,
"If we were going to break up officially like this, maybe we could have just talked about it.
I don't see why you had to tell your publicist. And now I have been publicly humiliated."
Even with that, the pair formed a lasting friendship. During 2003's MTV Bash,
Hewitt roasted Daly by reading one of his love letters before admitting,
"Having you in my life was very important to me,
and being your girlfriend was truly one of the best things I've ever had the honor to do."
Daly officially put their breakup to rest during
Hewitt's 2005 appearance on Last Call with Carson Daly, saying,
"It ended a little weird, I got to be honest. It doesn't matter [...] you know I love you."
Daly and Pinter's romance was initially a secret — a forbidden office romance where
the pair tried their best not to get caught. According to People magazine,
the couple first met in 2005 when Pinter was a writing assistant on Daly's late-night show
Last Call – and there was an instant attraction. Daly told the magazine,
"She would walk into our meetings and I would look at the other dudes in the room,
like, 'Do you see what I see?' It was undeniable."
Clearly, this sort of romance would probably get some side-eye from HR — and
that's just a best-case scenario where no one's reprimanded for dating their
inferior — but it turned out to be the real deal. In an interview with Elle,
Daly owned up to hiding their fling until they realized it was more than just an office romance.
Daly took a cautious and slow approach to getting engaged to Pinter. The pair didn't buy into
societal pressures to tie the knot. According to Us Weekly, when they finally got engaged in 2013,
they had been dating for eight years and already had two kids.
Even before their engagement, Daly admitted that they weren't
really worried about getting married. He told Elle in 2012,
"I think long-lasting, healthy relationships are more important than the idea of marriage.
At the root of every successful marriage is a strong partnership. And that's what we have."
They didn't have a traditional year-long engagement, either.
It took two years for Siri to walk down the aisle in a secret ceremony. The year prior,
it didn't even seem like a wedding was a priority at all. Daly told People in 2014,
"Our lives have been crazy. We'll get married when we have time. The husband and wife thing
is just the bow around something. Our end game is we want to be together forever."
Perhaps the secret to a long-enduring romance is to have your own bedroom far
away from the kicking, turning, and loud breathing of a partner.
In an interview with People, Daly made the shocking admission that he started, quote,
"sleep divorcing" his wife when she was pregnant with baby number four. He explained,
"We're both pretty good-sized humans and it just wasn't really working when she was in her third
trimester, and I also have sleep apnea, which is very sexy for the ladies out there, I'm sure.
She couldn't get comfortable, so we were like a commercial you would see,
kicking each other and just not sleeping."
The couple unilaterally decided to just call it a day on sharing a bed,
and they never looked back, especially after their fourth child was born. Carson,
who wakes up at 3 a.m. to film the Today show, didn't want to risk waking his wife and daughter,
so he stayed in a separate room. He ultimately found that having more energy
actually helped his relationship rather than hurt it. He admitted,
"I don't know if we'll ever sleep together again."
After a decade of waiting, you might think a marriage would be a huge celebration,
but this low-key couple didn't even send their parents a "Save The Date."
According to Today, Daly and Pinter tied the knot on Christmas Eve in a small, secret ceremony.
Their families were visiting for the holidays, and they surprised their mothers with the wedding.
Pinter kept things affordable and vaguely DIY. In a blog post,
the bride revealed that at one point, she even considered making her own wedding cake,
but scrapped the idea when she became, quote, "a ball of stress" while trying to finalize
the wedding details and shop for Christmas gifts at the same time. She did, however,
order her own cake-topper that displayed the word "finally," but it never came. Perfectly fitting
for a marriage ten years in the making, but they wouldn't have changed a thing. Daly told Today,
"It was great that the kids were a little bit older. They actually knew what was going on."
Daly and Pinter first met at work, so it only makes sense that work would become a
family affair. Though Pinter has since moved on from Last Call, and the show aired its
final episode in 2019, the couple's children still regularly find their way onto sets.
Bringing the kids to work seemed like a regular thing for the former MTV VJ
during his time on The Voice, where he's served as a host and producer since 2011.
The show was a full-circle moment for him and Christina Aguilera, who knew each other from
way back in the days of TRL. Daly told People that his and Aguilera's sons play together.
Years later, Daly's son Jack actually seems poised to follow in his father's footsteps.
In April 2020, Jack hosted NBC's Nightly News: Kids Edition, where he talked about
homeschooling and the virtual safaris being held by the Cincinnati Zoo. Daly told Today,
"That was pretty cool. I'll tell you what, I'm really proud of the kid,
just for getting up and working and not slacking off like it's summertime around here."
"It just goes to show if you eat your vegetables and show
up on time you can ascend the news ranks rather quickly."
Love can be terrifying, especially after experiencing a painful loss — and Daly
isn't afraid to admit it. The former MTV VJ has never been shy about getting vulnerable on air
and opened up about the aftermath of his mother's passing during an episode of Today.
In short: he made the heartbreaking admission that the overwhelming
grief he felt from losing his mother made him afraid to love his children.
Daly's mother passed away in 2017 from a heart attack. He lost his stepfather to bone
cancer a little over a month later. Two years after the gutting losses,
guest host Hoda Kotb asked the star what his parents were proudest of, and he told her,
"My parents were overly proud. I sometimes try to love my kids, I think, less,
almost on purpose, because I'm so scared of loving them too much."
Daly elaborated further, claiming his mother loved him, quote,
"almost too much" and that when she passed, he felt a huge void. He added,
"It hurt so much because I'm so bummed that the love isn't there anymore,
and that's a byproduct of her love for me. And that's the greatest gift you can
give your kids. It's a scary proposition, too."
"I find myself falling in love with my kids so much, and I almost
want to put a little bit of a guard there out of fear."
Pinter didn't fully realize her path in life until after she had kids.
Though she was previously working as a writing assistant on Last Call,
she had no idea that she would eventually discover her love for food blogging when she
started expanding her family. In an interview with Long Island Press, the mother of four admitted
that she decided to launch her blog Siriously Delicious when her son was born. She explained,
"I was working in late-night television and I was producing segments. I missed writing, and then I
decided to combine that with my love of food. Starting a food blog wasn't like I was suddenly
a foodie, it was more like 'Oh my gosh, I am in this domestic situation — how do people do it?'"
At first, Pinter's blog was mostly a way to keep track of the meals
she served her family and to exercise her sense of humor,
but it evolved way past that. The writer has since released a cookbook named after her blog
and regularly visits the Today kitchen to film cooking segments alongside her husband.
Normally couples have a lengthy list of potential names for their babies,
but by kid number four, Daly and Pinter were a bit stuck for inspiration.
They ultimately didn't even end up naming their kid after a human — at least not totally.
During an episode of the Today show, Daly admitted that the pair wanted to
give their youngest daughter an Irish name to represent his Irish heritage.
He had done an Ancestry DNA kit, which was originally a Christmas gift from his sister,
and it confirmed that he was 98% Irish. They browsed Irish baby names but ultimately landed
on "Goldie" — derived from the idea of a lucky pot of gold — on St. Patrick's Day. He admitted,
"We had a short list of names that we liked,
but nothing was sticking its neck out. And I thought about it, you know,
this is our fourth kid. She seems like the pot of gold at the end of our family rainbow."
The pair also opted to honor Daly's late mother by giving Goldie the middle name Patricia,
but despite the meaningful name, the tot now goes by the nickname "Go Go."
In the past, Daly has been open about his struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In an episode
of Today, he admitted that he was, quote, "always worrying" when he was a child. He explained,
"My father died when I was 5. I had an ulcer when I was in high school.
I've been nervous my whole life."
In adulthood, Daly's anxiety even led him to the hospital,
where he feared he was having a heart attack. Since then, Daly has learned how to cope better
with the help of a cognitive therapist, but it still affects his day-to-day. He revealed,
"I've had heightened anxiety and mild panic attacks at the
playground with my own children and wife there.
The feeling was so gripping and so terrifying that literally I had to leave and excuse myself."
"What helped me was talking to a friend once who said
'Everything you're experiencing I have too. You have anxiety."
Unexpectedly, things started to ease up a bit after the birth of Goldie.
While most parents are stressed out and sleepless while caring for a newborn — much less caring for
a newborn in the midst of global pandemic — Daly found a sense of calm. He told People magazine,
"It's fun to be able to wake up and not be like,
'Oh my God, my life's upside down,' but to hold the newborn instead."
Similarly, Pinter dished to People that she felt calm because Goldie was her fourth kid.
In 2018, Daly used his marriage to remind us to focus on what really matters.
That year, The Voice was nominated for an Emmy Award in the Reality Competition category,
but lost to RuPaul's Drag Race. Daly, however,
didn't seem to sweat it. In an Instagram post, he claimed he'd already won, saying,
"Well, we may have lost the Emmy […] but I am still the big winner having the most
incredible wife, mom and life partner next to me. And as my mom would say in
her Carolina drawl, 'She's not only purdy on the outside, but on the inside too!'"
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