Chelsea Handler reflects on her split from Jo Koy
Jo Koy and Chelsea Handler at the Grammy Awards in April.
By Marianne Garvey, CNN
Chelsea Handler is opening up about her former relationship with fellow comic Jo Koy.
In an episode of Brooke Shields’ “Now What?” podcast published Tuesday, Handler said that she truly thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with Koy.
“I really believed that this was my guy. 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,” she said. “I have all of these things. And then I thought this was gonna be the person I spend my life with.”
Handler said she was even open to the idea of marriage before the two parted ways after nearly a year together.
“I’m not that hard up to get married, but I was open to the idea of it, and we definitely discussed it at length because it was important to him,” she said. “And then, towards the end of the relationship, it just became clear that this was not my person.”
She continued: “There were just some behaviors that we couldn’t agree on. It felt to me like I would have to abandon myself, which maybe I would have been okay to do if I were 20 or 25, but I wasn’t willing to do that. No matter how much I loved this person — and I loved him so much — I was not going to abandon myself,” Handler 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.”
Handler and Koy first met about 20 years ago, and he was a frequent guest on Handler’s former E! show, “Chelsea Lately.”
They announced they were a couple in September 2021 and their split in July.
The two haven’t spoken recently, Handler added.
“There has to be some accountability from him about what happened because it was just ridiculous, and I don’t think we can have a friendship until there’s some accountability and some responsibility taken,” she concluded.
The-CNN-Wire
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