Matt LeBlanc has been married once. His wife was Melissa McKnight, a former model he married on Kauai in May 2003 and divorced in October 2006. He has not remarried since.
They met in 1997, six years before the wedding, while LeBlanc was in the middle of his run as Joey Tribbiani on Friends. McKnight had two children from her first marriage, Tyler and Jacquelyn, and by the time the ceremony came round he had been raising them for most of a decade.
| Matt LeBlanc and Melissa McKnight | |
|---|---|
| Met | 1997 |
| Engaged | 1998 |
| Married | 3 May 2003, Kauai, Hawaii |
| Separated | January 2006 |
| Divorced | October 2006 |
| Their daughter | Marina Pearl LeBlanc, born 2004 |
| Her children from her first marriage | Tyler and Jacquelyn |
Table of Contents
Who is Melissa McKnight?
McKnight is a former model. Her first marriage was to the rock musician Anthony Esposito, and Tyler and Jacquelyn were born during it.
She was introduced to LeBlanc in 1997 by her longtime friend Kelly Phillips and Phillips’s husband, the actor Lou Diamond Phillips. LeBlanc proposed less than a year later. The wedding took another five years. A Friends insider told People the delay came down to his filming schedule, and that his mother wanted him to have a proper wedding rather than a rushed one.
By the time it happened he had been hosting the children’s birthday parties and taking them on holidays for years. A friend told the magazine he thought of them as his own.
The wedding on Kauai
LeBlanc, then 35, and McKnight, then 38, married on 3 May 2003 at a private estate above Anini Beach on the island’s north shore, in front of about 75 guests. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow were there. David Schwimmer and the late Matthew Perry were not, both with theatre commitments.
Kudrow told People it was “so romantic and beautiful”. The ceremony ran 25 minutes and was non-religious, with vows the couple had written themselves. Tyler, 12, and Jacquelyn, 8, served as the attendants.
Marina’s first two years
Their daughter, Marina Pearl, was born in 2004. At eight months old she began having seizures that took away her ability to crawl and sit up. Her parents spent months going through tests without a clear answer.
People reported at the time that she was believed to have a form of dysplasia, a neurological disorder. The Telegraph later reported the diagnosis as cortical dysplasia.
By the start of 2006 she had recovered and was walking and talking normally. The couple had just bought a new home in Los Angeles.
What happened in January 2006
The previous summer, LeBlanc had told the National Enquirer about irresponsible behaviour with a stripper during a motorcycle trip to Canada.
On 18 January 2006 he told McKnight he was moving out of their Encino home, and took an apartment near the studio where Joey was taped. He had been seeing Andrea Anders, his co-star on the show, since that month.
In March, McKnight accused him of being involved with another woman, and he admitted he was. On 30 March his lawyer rang her to say the divorce papers were coming.
An acquaintance told People:
“Matt was finally figuring out that maybe he just wasn’t meant to be married.”
What the divorce settlement covered
The divorce was finalised in October 2006. Court documents reported at the time by TMZ set out what LeBlanc owed:
- $15,000 a month in child support for Marina until she turned 18
- Her school fees, medical costs and nanny
- Joint custody
The couple also had a prenuptial agreement, under which McKnight gave up spousal support in exchange for a cash settlement.
Tyler and Jacquelyn are not mentioned in any of it. They had no legal standing in the divorce. LeBlanc had been in their lives for nine years by then.
What happened to Matt LeBlanc’s wife after the divorce?
A source close to LeBlanc told People in 2006 that the two had mediated the outstanding questions between them and stayed friendly. Kelly Phillips described her friend at the time as strong, and said she would recover in time.
Marina is now 22. Twenty years after the divorce, Page Six still refers to LeBlanc and McKnight as exes who share a daughter.
The relationships since the divorce
LeBlanc and Anders stayed together until 2014, about eight years. Anders, who is from Wisconsin, played his neighbour on Joey and had just shot a pilot for the Friends producer David Crane when the two of them got together.
From 2016 to 2021 he was with Aurora Mulligan, a television producer. LeBlanc joined Top Gear as a presenter in 2016 and Mulligan was working on the show. Neither relationship ended in marriage.
Is Matt LeBlanc married now?
No. As of September 2026 the marriage to McKnight is still the only one he has had.
On 4 August 2026 he was photographed leaving Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica with a yoga instructor who goes by Chaz. She has taught yoga for more than 25 years and founded a studio in Fresno in 2006, which she sold three years later. Page Six reported that neither of them was available for comment, and that it was not clear whether they were friends or something more.
