Chelsea Handler Shares the Real Story Behind Her Romance With Jo Koy

You know that saying of the best relationships being rooted in friendship? Well, for Chelsea Handler, there’s truth to that claim.

As the comedian noted in E!’s cover story, she was perfectly fine as “an emblem of a single woman with no children, to show other women that they don’t have to have children or a husband to have it all,” before unexpectedly falling in love with one of her closest friends, Jo Koy.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m just not getting that,'” she exclusively told E! News in a cover story published April 28. “‘That’s okay. I have my family, I have my friends, I’m set. I don’t have to worry about finding love.'”

But then, mid-pandemic, Chelsea realized that she began to miss Jo—who she bickered with during his time as a panelist on her show Chelsea Lately—more than she thought she would.

“When he was leaving, I was like, ‘That’s a bummer,'” she recalled. “Or if I didn’t hear from him for a couple of days, I was like, ‘Where’s Jo Koy? He’s usually up my ass.’ And then I started to realize, ‘Oh, he’s not annoying me.'”