Fran Drescher and her ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson are happily divorced.
The Nanny alum and the TV writer were married for 21 years before they split in 1999. It wasn’t until two years after their divorce that Jacobson revealed to Drescher that he is gay.
“He got in touch with his true orientation,” Drescher told PEOPLE in 2011. “I can’t blame him for that.”
Although their marriage ended, the former couple now have a relationship as friends and continue to collaborate, co-creating Happily Divorced, which is based on their real-life experiences.
“We work together. Go out to eat. Travel together. I feel like I still have a wife,” Jacobson said. That same year, Drescher pointed out to CNN that sometimes people who “weren’t meant to be married” are instead “meant to be something else with each other.”
“And we put as much work into having a successful divorce as we did in trying to have a successful marriage. And it takes that kind of dedication,” she said. “But as a result of that, we’re now the best of friends. We’ve reinvented the relationship. It sits on another shelf in our life.”
So who is Fran Drescher’s ex-husband? Here’s everything to know about Peter Marc Jacobson and his relationship with the actress.
Jacobson and Drescher were high school sweethearts
Jacobson and Drescher met when they were 15 years old in high school, where they were both in the theater program, the former couple told TV Land.
Speaking to Get Out in 2015, Jacobson recalled, “In high school they had theater classes, and at the time we were both actors, but still we would do directing, lighting, you did everything.”
After school, the two would go home and watch TV together. “Her mother used to stare at us and think, ‘Oh my god, what is he going to do to make a living?’ Yeah, we were lucky it actually happened,” Jacobson said.
He and Drescher got married in 1978
The high school sweethearts got married in 1978 when they were 21 years old. Jacobson later admitted to PEOPLE that he “buried” his feelings when he felt an attraction to men and was determined to continue living the traditional lifestyle of those around him.
“I grew up in Flushing, Queens. You married at 21, had a big wedding in Great Neck and lived happily ever after,” the TV writer said.
Jacobson and Drescher have worked together
While they were married, the pair co-created the show The Nanny starring Drescher as a nanny to the children of a wealthy widower. The CBS sitcom ran for six seasons from 1993 to 1999.
Over a decade after Jacobson and Drescher’s divorce, the friendly exes co-created the TV Land sitcom Happily Divorced about a woman whose husband comes out as gay after 18 years of marriage.
“It’s cathartic, putting it out there,” the actress told PEOPLE of the show. “It helps me to be reflective.”
In January 2020, PEOPLE confirmed that Drescher was adapting The Nanny into a Broadway musical alongside her ex-husband.
Jacobson initially told Drescher he was bisexual
During their marriage, Jacobson confessed to Drescher that he might be bisexual, but he wanted to stay married. Meanwhile, she did not want to punish Jacobson for being honest about his feelings, she explained to PEOPLE.
“Once he got in touch with his confusion, he did sit me down, and he said, ‘I think I’m bisexual but I’m making the choice—I love you, I love our life together and I want to spend my life with you,’ ” Drescher shared during an appearance on The Oprah Show in 2014.
She added, “And I, who was at that point Miss Super Woman and not in touch with how it was really affecting me, felt like ‘My God, he’s being so honest with me. He must really love me.’ ”
They didn’t speak for a year after they split
In the end, it was Drescher who ended their marriage after more than two decades together. Suppressing his sexuality had made Jacobson “angry and controlling,” he told PEOPLE.
“It was incredibly hard at first,” Drescher said of leaving. “I needed to be my own woman. I had never been in touch with my feelings.”
The actress, who told host Oprah Winfrey that she “felt like a bird in a gilded cage,” said that Jacobson begged her not to leave him. But once The Nanny ended, the writer moved to New York, and the former couple didn’t speak for a year.
Drescher’s cancer diagnosis brought them back together
In 2000, Drescher was diagnosed with uterine cancer. “I got a call from her manager and she told me Fran has cancer,” Jacobson shared in an interview with Australian talk show Studio 10. “I hadn’t spoken to her since that last day — I was very angry, because I didn’t want to get divorced, she did. I wasn’t out yet.”
Drescher’s diagnosis led to them rekindling their friendship. “You realize how precious life is,” Jacobson told PEOPLE. “Any moment spent on hate is a moment wasted.”
He came out after his and Drescher’s divorce
Two years after their divorce, Jacobson realized he was gay.
“I just knew that there was something that was not right, because I thought about other men sometimes,” he told Get Out. “I felt like I didn’t want to cheat on her. I had all that stuff running in my head, and that was a big problem for me. I felt like maybe I was cheating in my head. I talked to many therapists about it, and they all said, ‘No, you’re not gay.’ ”
However, after moving to New York by himself and declining to go on a date with Sharon Stone, Jacobson joked he started to realize that he may not be interested in women altogether. “That kind of clicked in my head: that any red-blooded straight man would go on a date with Sharon Stone,” he said.
Eventually, he came out to Drescher. He recalled to PEOPLE that at the time he “still couldn’t” say the word “gay,” but confessed to Drescher that he “was dating men.”
“Surviving cancer put everything into perspective,” she said of her reaction. “I just wanted him to be happy.”
He was supportive of Drescher’s second marriage
When Drescher married her second husband, Shiva Ayyadurai, in 2014, Jacobson wrote her a letter in which he told her that she taught him “how to love somebody,” he told Get Out. The letter continued, “And I’m so happy that you have found somebody that you truly love. I’m just so happy for you. That’s all I want.”
While he and Drescher are no longer married, Jacobson said that they are still “soulmates.”
“You know, I truly want her to be happy. I just want her to be happy. I love her so much,” he said.
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