Jerry Seinfeld is well-known for his role in the sitcom Seinfeld, in which he plays a semi-fictionalized version of his stand-up career and life. The sitcom, which he and Larry David made and wrote, ran for nine seasons and 180 episodes and was a big hit.
In 1998, he met his wife, Jessica. Before that, he was in a with Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, a 17-year-old high school senior, in a relationship that caused a lot of trouble. Jerry Seinfeld was 21 years older than her when they met in Central Park in New York City in May 1993.
Jerry Seinfeld on Dating a 21-Year Younger Woman.
It looks like the age difference between them didn’t bother them.
I met this girl, Shoshanna,
the comedian told Playboy in a 1993 interview.
She’s a very sweet girl and she’s very pretty. I didn’t know how old she was — I knew she wasn’t 40,
Jerry Seinfeld revealed.
I took her to a basketball game and that was the whole thing,
he added.
Jerry Seinfeld’s relationship with a teenager drew a lot of attention. Howard Stern, who is known for his talk show, The Howard Stern Show, asked the comedian some rude questions about their relationship.
So you sit in Central Park and have a candy bar on a string and pull it when the girls come?
Responding to Stern, Seinfeld said,
I didn’t realize she was so young. This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn’t dating her. We just went to a restaurant, and that was it.
Jerry Seinfeld and Shoshanna’s Four Years Long Relationship.
Seinfeld was always quick to defend his controversial relationship with Gruss.
I am not an idiot,
he said defending the relationship.
Shoshanna is a person, not an age. She is extremely bright. She’s funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click.
At the time, reports said that the couple first said they were “just friends” and didn’t tell anyone about their relationship until Gruss turned 18.
George Wallace, a comedian and close friend of Seinfeld, told People that she was beautiful and mature and that “she’s good for him.” Seinfeld’s manager at the time, George Shapiro also said,
I’ve never seen him happier.
Further, Jerry Seinfeld told Playboy,
I don’t meet that many women I like, period. So when I like someone, I don’t care about her race, creed, or national origin. If I like her, I don’t care. I don’t discriminate. If she’s 18, if she’s intelligent, that’s fine.
After dating for four years, the couple broke up in 1997. According to the news, there was no fight between the two. Gruss went to UCLA, and as Seinfeld worked more and more in Los Angeles, the distance between them grew. In the end, her lifestyle couldn’t keep up with the comedian’s busy schedule.
I wanted to run around and play,
she said.
Gruss said that she was happy with the relationship, but it didn’t work out because they lived far apart.
Where is Shoshanna Lonstein Now?
After they broke up, Gruss got a job as a fashion designer. She then came up with the idea of “clothes with more inclusivity” for her first collection, which came out in 1998 under her own name. In 2003, she married Joshua Gruss, who ran a record label. They have a daughter named Sienna and twin boys named Joseph and Angelica. 2014 was also the year that the Gruss couple broke up. It was “amicable and sad.”
She wrote on Instagram in 2021 that she was writing a book about her life called “The Fabric of My Life.” Now, she is busy with her business and social media, where she often posts photos of her children and items from her collection.
