When it comes to his nearly five year marriage with ScarlettJohansson, Colin Jost isn’t afraid to do the dirty work.
“My wife actually lost her engagement ring,” the longtime Saturday Night Live castmember revealed while hosting Pop Culture Jeopardy! earlier this year. So, he worked his way through 12 New York City dumpsters, he shared, before returning to their home where the 40-year-old “said, ‘Oops! It was in my pocket!’ It was a great day for me.”
But even on days that are literal trash, he’s still married to Scarlett Johansson.
“I’ve met someone I love and who I feel more comfortable with than I ever have before,” the 42-year-old Weekend Update cohost detailed in his 2020 memoir, A Very Punchable Face. “I feel more confident committing to what I’m working on and standing by whatever I create, regardless of whether people like it or not.”
And, for the record, Johansson is a big fan of his work.
Take that 11-carat oval diamond he went dumpster diving for, a gem almost as breathtaking as the 2019 proposal itself.
“He killed it,” Johansson raved to Ellen DeGeneres months after he popped the question. “He did, like, a whole James Bond situation…it was surprising. He’s got a lot behind that news desk that he’s hiding.”
The comedian’s elaborate scheme, she continued, “was very personal. It was a very special moment. And I think, more than anything, when someone tells you they want to share the rest of their life with you, it’s a lovely, special thing.”
Now years removed from their initimate 2020 vows, it still feels quites sacred.
Like most couples, they have their squabbles over things like who’s the better bedtime story teller for 10-year-old Rose (her daughter with former husband Romain Duriac) and their 3-year-old son Cosmo. “You know how actors sometimes do a whole acting thing and they tend to sort of make it all about them?” he joked on Today. “I’m not naming names, but just actors in general.”
And then there’s the disagreements that arise when he helps The Phoenician Scheme actress rehearse.
“Colin has his own interpretation,” she explained to E! News in 2023. “He wants to give it his own flavor. I’m like, ‘I don’t need you to act, I just need you to say the lines!'”
So all signs point to a happily ever after.
But it wasn’t all that long ago, that one of the world’s highest paid actresses assumed her life would follow a whole different script.
Because she was decidedly iffy on the idea of monogamy after brief unions to Dauriac and Ryan Reynolds.
“I think the idea of marriage is very romantic; it’s a beautiful idea,” she opined to Playboy in 2017, “and the practice of it can be a very beautiful thing.”
However, she admitted, “I don’t think it’s natural to be a monogamous person. I might be skewered for that, but I think it’s work. It’s a lot of work.”
It’s a line many a married couple before her has repeated, citing the hours of therapy, tricky conversations and endless compromise that it can take to travel through life with a partner. And it’s a truth many people use to explain why, despite their best efforts, their union has run its course.
“And the fact that it is such work for so many people—for everyone—the fact of that proves that it is not a natural thing,” Johansson noted to the mag. “It’s something I have a lot of respect for and have participated in, but I think it definitely goes against some instinct to look beyond.”
And yet falling for Jost once they reconnected in 2017 had her doing just that.
Still healing from her second major split in six years, “She’s not trying to rush into anything,” a source told E! News at the time, “and is just chilling.”
So while she was game to listen to Howard Stern rattle off a list of potential paramours during an appearance on his SiriusXM radio show in March 2017 and even added a few of her own (while unavailable, she dubbed Gordon Ramsay “the hottest guy right now in the world,” and cited Anthony Bourdain as a crush), Johansson wasn’t actually looking to cook up something special with any of them.
“I’m on guard,” she offered as reason for her hesitance, “because I have a young daughter. That’s something I’m more concerned about.”
But when she encountered Jost while rehearsing for her Mar. 11, 2017 Saturday Night Live hosting gig, she wasn’t not intrigued.
The pair had “kind of known each other,” as Jost later put it since her third time helming the sketch series in 2010.
It was then that the Staten Island native, who earned his star-making gig on the NBC staple in 2005, mere months after graduating from Harvard, pitched a sketch that poked fun at MTV hits 16 and Pregnant and My Super Sweet 16.
“It was some dumb parody that he had written, and he was in there partly directing this segment we had to do,” she recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “That’s my first memory of him. He seemed very confident at the time. I don’t know if he felt that way, but in that environment, if you’re not confident as a writer, your stuff just never gets produced.”
At the time, Johansson was married to Reynolds, but when she returned seven years later, Jost was still serving as a head writer and still confident, having claimed a spot behind the Weekend Update desk with Michael Che.
His clean-cut looks and quick wit had already charmed the likes of Rashida Jones and the editors at People who named him their Sexiest Joke Writer and he checked off more than a few items on Johansson’s suitor wish list.
A onetime junior Olympian and graduate in Russian and British literature, he had the requisite intelligence.
And his childhood home—just a few miles from where she grew up in Manhattan—gave them shared city roots. “Being a New Yorker is part of your personality,” she’s told Cosmpolitan, adding, “It seems wonderful to be raised in a natural setting, but I wouldn’t know how to do it. A big city would always draw me back.”
And while at first glance, the wholesome Ivy Leaguer, who participated in both debate and speech at Regis High School, may not have the same rebellious streak as, say, Sean Penn, who Johansson dated in 2011, or Jared Leto, her partner for a brief period in 2004, his job as SNL head writer gives him a bit of that desirable edge.
“I’m attracted to the quality of being adventurous and perhaps a bit mischievous,” Johansson told Cosmopolitan in 2011, “and also questioning authority and being proactive.”
Plus Jost had the added benefit of not being a full-time actor, the issue of two competing thespians in a relationship having tripped Johansson up in the past.
“The logistics of being with another actor are challenging,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2016. “There has to be a real understanding of how you share your time, especially when two people’s careers are going at the same rate. Or even if one person is more successful than the other, that also proves challenging. There may be a competitive thing.”
So, really, if it’s all the same, it’d be easier for her to choose someone without an IMDB profile. But at least Jost’s is heavy on the writing credits with parts in films like 2015’s Staten Island Summer, 2016’s How to Be Single and 2024’s Fly Me to the Moon.
“Acting is a very strange world to be co-existing in. It’s very volatile,” Johansson described to Parade in 2015. “There’s always going to be the more successful person. It’s related to rejection. Because actors, if they’re not having success, connect it directly to unpopularity—to the fact that nobody wants them. It’s not necessarily true. I’m constantly rejected.”
But that means that any marriage between two stars requires even more work: “It takes a man who’s not only confident in the love that you have for one another, but confident in what he has going on in his own career.”
And Jost, as we’ve established, has every reason to feel confident.
By the time he caught Johansson’s eye, he had more than a decade at SNL under his belt. And while the pair were initially determined to keep their romance “fun and casual”, an insider told E! News, by May 2017 she was making an appearance on the season finale, reprising her take on Ivanka Trump, and a cameo at the wrap party, in the role of Jost’s make out partner.
“They’re not in a relationship, but they have fun together,” a source told E! News. “They like each other, but it’s not exclusive—at least not at this point.”
So Jost gave nothing away while chatting with E! News at Hilarity for Charity’s Third Annual New York City Variety Show that June.
Asked to share his summer plans, he spoke about hitting the comedy circuit (“I went to Alabama for the first time in my life, which is pretty cool. I’d never been and thought why not do some shows there?”), touring Europe and spending some time a few hours outside the city in Montauk to “surf and relax a bit.”
And also make out with his girlfriend.
The pair were spotted in nearby East Hampton over the Fourth of July and then closing out the summer by kissing in the rain at a Labor Day party in the seaside town. By the time the weather cooled, a source reported, the budding couple were “more on the exclusive level” and thus done with hiding their romance.
So when Jost was asked about flying solo at September’s Emmy Awards, he revealed his go-to date was otherwise entangled. “She’s wonderful. She’s working, so otherwise, she’d be here,” he told ET. As for what about the star made her the girl for him, he responded, “She’s pretty cool…it’s hard to have a lot of complaints, she’s pretty awesome.”
As the months wore on, the twosome grew ever more at ease with making the transition from open secret to established Hollywood pair.
By that October, Johansson was mingling with the likes of Emma Stone, Dakota Johnson, host Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, musical guest Jay-Z and Beyoncé at the SNL after party.
In November they made their official debut at the American Museum of Natural History gala and by the holidays, Che was calling out their love, sharing a snap of Johansson and Jost ice skating hand-in-hand at Rockefeller Center to his Instagram stories.
So it wasn’t all that surprising when Jost turned up at the April 2018 premiere of her film Avengers: Infinity War. But their decision to attend the Met Gala together in 2018—the Hollywood equivalent of prom night—was certainly a big statement.
By then, Jost was telling pals he would like to marry her one day and the admittedly choosy Johansson was confessing to her crew that just maybe she’d met her ideal match.
“He’s got his naughty side,” she teased during a 2024 interview on Live with Kelly and Mark. “That’s why he keeps it interesting.”
Perhaps a bit too interesting at times…
Reflecting on the decidedly NSFW joke he made about her nether regions during his and Che’s infamous joke swap last December, Johannson detailed to InStyle, “I just can’t believe that they went there. It was so vulgar. It was so gross. It was really gross. And, like, old-school gross.”
Of course, she got her revenge while returning as host for the seventh time on the season 50 season finale May 18.
“You know, last time we did ‘joke swap,’ I made Colin do some tasteless jokes comparing your vagina to Costco roast beef,” Che detailed while once again trading quips with his longtime costar. “Well, the fact is, I was just lashing out because I’m jealous. I’ve never even seen a human vagina.”
The moment proved Johansson was the ultimate avenger, but it was just one highlight of her take-your-wife-to-work week.
“It felt like a runaway train and by the end the wheels and bottom were all falling off and it was crazy,” she reflected to E! News of her most recent time helming the comedy series. “It felt like a big blur.”
And yet, through all of the chaos, she continued, “You try to take your moments as you’re doing it to look around and appreciate the uniqueness of what you’re experiencing and how special it is.”
And there’s a lot to take in. Keep reading to see scenes from her and Jost’s sweet love story.
(This story was originally published Nov. 19 , 2018 at 10 a.m. PST.)
Super Parents
From Hollywood power couple to super parents, the couple announced the special news that they welcomed a baby boy named Cosmo in 2021.
Green With Envy
In May 2021, the couple proved they know how to have a little fun during awards season. While accepting the Generation Award at the MTV Movie & TV Awards, Colin brought out a green bowl of slime and poured it over his wife. The moment? Iconic.
Round of Applause
When award season came to a close at the 2020 Oscars, Scarlett and Colin were one of Hollywood’s most fashionable—and lovable—couples.
Dynamic Duo
While celebrating her 2020 SAG Awards nominations for Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit, Scarlett received support from Colin.
Look of Love
After the show is the after-party! Colin and Scarlett whooped it up at Netflix’s 2020 Golden Globes After Party.
Red Carpet PDA
In between posing for photos in her stunning red gown, Scarlett managed to sneak in a kiss with Colin at the 2020 Golden Globes.
The Endgame? It’s Just the Beginning
The lovebirds shared a laugh at the Avengers: Endgame premiere in April 2019.
Pretty in Pink
Scarlett and Colin attended the 2018 American Museum of Natural History Gala together.
The Biggest Night in Television
The SNL actor and Avengers actress celebrated the best in television at the 2018 Emmy Awards.
Met Gala Goals
The Hollywood couple slayed on one of the biggest red carpets in the world when they attended the 2018 Met Gala.
Look of Love
They say a picture is worth a thousands words. But when it was time for Scarlett to celebrate Avengers: Infinity War, all we saw was love in Colin’s eyes.
To Infinity and Beyond
In a rare joint red carpet appearance, the couple walked the carpet together at the 2018 premiere Avengers: Infinity War.
Bringing the Heat
The couple stepped out for the first time together at the 2017 Museum Gala at American Museum of Natural History.
