Love is a funny thing! Ellie Kemper and husband Michael Koman have kept each other laughing for more than a decade.
The Office alum announced the duo’s engagement during a December 2011 interview with Conan O’Brien. “I want to mention something. It’s sort of a big deal around [the Conan] office. You got engaged,” the talk show host said, describing Koman as a “very talented writer who worked for me for many, many years.”
Kemper couldn’t help but gush over her then-fiancé, noting, “Michael’s a delight, as you know, so of course [my parents] like him a lot.”
While her family came around to the Nathan for You writer, they initially had some reservations. Kemper recalled a conversation she had with her grandfather at Thanksgiving years before getting engaged that made Koman “squirm.”
“There was a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie out, and my grandpa said, ‘Ellie, what kind of pie are you gonna have?’” she said on Conan. “And I said, ‘I don’t know, Grandpa. They both look really good. I think I’ll have pecan.’ He said, ‘Are you sure, Ellie? Because it’s OK to keep your options open. You don’t have to settle on a pie right now.’”
The twosome exchanged vows in New York City July 2012 with Bridesmaids stars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph on hand to celebrate the big day. Us Weekly exclusively confirmed four years later that Kemper was pregnant with the couple’s first child.
The Missouri native was filming Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season 2 when she learned she was expecting. “I told [show creator Tina Fey] before I told my mom,” she teased on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in April 2016.
Son James arrived four months later. “He’s a genius,” the Netflix actress exclusively told Us of her baby boy in May 2018, sharing an update on his milestones. “I can’t believe how he’s mastered all of these words already. In the past week, he’s started imitating, mimicking words that I say. He says them right back to me and I think he’s the smartest person on the planet. It is incredible how quickly everything changes.”
Kemper announced her second pregnancy one year later, and she gave birth to son Matthew in September 2019.
“I am so tired,” she told Us that November of adjusting to being a family of four. “It’s just a new mode of existence and I feel like it takes some getting used to it. … It’s insane. My husband said [when] he didn’t have, like, a minute to answer an email the other day, ‘It’s like waiting for a bird to fly by, having that moment of just free time.’”
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Scroll down for a look back at Kemper and Koman’s relationship:
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