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All About Andy Samberg's Wife Joanna Newsom and Their Kids

The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star and the singer-songwriter met because they were huge fans of each other's work. 

By Samantha Vincenty

The first sentence Joanna Newsom said to her future husband, Andy Samberg, was laced with obscenities. And she meant it as a sincere compliment.

How to Watch

Watch every episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Peacock.

The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star and the singer-songwriter-harpist have been married since September 2013. But long before they began a relationship that would lead to two children together, the two started out as huge fans of each other’s work. Their mutual admiration was clear from the moment they met through Samberg's fellow Saturday Night Live alum Fred Armisen

Here's more about Samberg's family with wife Joanna Newsom.

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Andy Samberg and his wife Joanna Newsom attend the 2015 emmys

How did Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg meet?

Newsom recounted her meet-cute with Samberg during her 2016 visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers

“I remember when he met you, because he was a huge fan of yours so it was a big deal," Meyers told Newsom (Samberg is Meyers' "self-proclaimed best friend"). "Do you remember how you met?" 

"I was a big fan of his," Newsom said. "In fact, the night that I met him, Fred Armisen brought him to one of my shows. And I had just been with my band backstage like an hour before, watching ‘Just 2 Guyz,’” Newsom explained.

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Samberg only appears in the pre-SNL Lonely Island sketch for a few seconds, as the titular 2 Guyz (Lonely Island members Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone) mark their disdain for his character with an offhanded, “who invited Steve? Steve’s a c---.”

“So when I met him, he was kinda shy,” Newsom told Meyers, doing a very cute reenactment of their handshake. “And I said, ‘Oh my god, you’re the c---! You’re Steve the c---!”

Clearly, Samberg knew they were on each other's wavelength right away. "He always says he saw like, heart bubbles" in reaction to her greeting, she added. 

The two began dating shortly after. In February 2013, US Weekly broke the news of their engagement. Samberg and Newsom, both native northern Californians, were married in Big Sur on California's central coast in September 2013, per CBS News. Samberg's "D--- in a Box" co-star Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were among those in attendance. 

Samberg's wife Joanna Newsom is a musician

Newsom is a multi-instrumentalist best known for her distinct vocals and virtuosic skill as a harpist.

"We have multiple harps in the home," Samberg told Conan O'Brien in 2017. "It's incredible for me when she plays — I just sort of lie down on the floor and zen out while she plays. It's really great."

She released her debut studio album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, in 2004, and her fourth and most recent album, Divers, in 2015. In May 2024, Newsom held a performance residency in Los Angeles, where she and Samberg live, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

"A lot of people take what she does really seriously — rightfully so, because it's this intense, beautiful, emotional stuff," Samberg told comedian Pete Holmes in ___. "But she's a very fun, silly person sometimes. That's a big part of her."

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Newsom appeared in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine finale

Samberg's wife had a cameo in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine series finale in 2021 as Caroline Saint-Jacques-Renard, a cellist the "surprise celebrity" hired by Captain Holt. Samberg calls Newsom's character a "nerd" — watch a clip here.

Andy Samberg and Joanna Newsom on the red carpet at the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party

 

Andy Samberg and Joanna Newsom's kids

Samberg and Newsom have two daughters. The couple announced the birth of their first child in August 2017. In February 2023, Samberg's fellow Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that Samberg and Newsom welcomed their second child in 2022. 

And that's about all of the information that Samberg and Newsom prefer to share publicly, as they've kept the ages and names of their two children private. 

"He's my favorite person in the world," Newsom told Larry King in 2015. "He's the person I would most want to hang out with at any given moment."