38-Year-Old Jerry Seinfeld Once Dated 17-Year-Old Shoshanna Lonstein — Where Is She Now?
She's a mom of three today.
Getty Jerry Seinfeld is known for his comedy and has been very successful with his comedy shows. His latest that just dropped today, Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill, is a stand-up special, his first since 1998!
Netflix describes the new special as, "Jerry Seinfeld takes the stage in New York and tackles talking vs. texting, bad buffets vs. so-called 'great' restaurants and the magic of Pop Tarts."
Seinfeld also revealed that this may be his last special, saying, "I'm really just into the pure art of it now. Just the bit, the audience and the moment. I'm more interested in that than ever, and I'm less interested in everything else."
Last summer, an episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee started to stir up a lot of drama. In the episode, Seinfeld is talking with Bridget Everett, and she mentions a certain legendary comedian's name.
Seinfeld had it bleeped out when the show aired. It has been revealed that the bleeped out name was legendary comedian, Bobcat Goldthwait. It was bleeped out due to a long-time beef Seinfeld has with him over a comment Goldthwait made in the mid-90s about Seinfeld's then-girlfriend.
In 1995, Goldthwait said, "Here is this creepy Scientologist guy (dating) teenage girls — which I don’t care about one way or another. What I find creepy is that people are convinced he lives in that apartment, and those are his wacky friends. They don’t like each other; they’re actors paid to pretend they like Jerry Seinfeld. He’s a weird guy. But everybody thinks he’s normal and I’m weird."
It was fair game, after all, if you remember that then-38-year-old Jerry Seinfeld was dating then 17-year-old Shoshanna Lonstein.
Who is Shoshanna Lonstein and where is she now?
Seinfeld and Lonstein met in 1993.
In 1993, Jerry Seinfeld was on top of his game. His sitcom Seinfeld was well on its way to becoming a part of our cultural footprint. The show won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series that year. He was one of the most famous people in the country.
And then, one day, 38-year-old Seinfeld met a girl, and we do mean a girl. He met a 17-year-old high school senior in Central Park. She gave him her phone number. That girl was Shoshanna Lonstein.
She was in high school when they met.
When Lonstein met Seinfeld, she was a senior at the Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Their relationship began shortly after she graduated from high school.
She enrolled at George Washington University in Washington D.C., where Seinfeld would visit her when he was in town. She flew to Los Angeles, where he filmed Seinfeld, to visit him. She transferred to UCLA after one year at GW in part to be closer to him.
They dated for four years.
Can you imagine a nearly 40-year-old celebrity dating a 17-year-old today and having it be accepted in 2020? It wouldn't happen. And it's not that Seinfeld didn't get flack for it.
Besides the whole Bobcat Goldthwait thing, Howard Stern also commented on the age difference — specifically how young Shoshanna was — saying, “So, you sit in Central Park and have a candy bar on a string and pull it when the girls come?”
Seinfeld and Lonstein broke up in 1997 after she graduated from UCLA with a degree in history and art history. She cited the contant pressures from media and the press as one of the reasons they called it quits.
Lonstein became a fashion designer.
In the years after Lonstein and Seinfeld split up, the new college grad built a career as a fashion designer — and she was good at it! She wanted to make clothes for women who weren't twigs, who had curves, but were also height/weight proportionate.
For several years in the early 2000s, a large number of the tops in this writer's closet were from Shoshonna's self-named label.
She was an early advocate of body positivity, saying, "My whole life, starting as a young teen, I was a hard fit for clothes. I was incredibly voluptuous and it was frustrating as a young woman to not find things that fit well and made me feel celebratory of my body. I’m fortunate that I had a mom who helped me find those things or altered them, especially my swimsuits. I was a size 2, but then I had a very busty top, and it could be very damaging for young girls to not feel like they can find things that work for them."
Lonstein eventually married and had children.
She married Joshua Gruss, a music industry executive, on May 10, 2003. They have three children together: a daughter Sienna, born in 2005, and twins Angelica and Joseph, born in 2012.
They divorced in 2014. She currently lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her three children.
She's continued to have a successful career in fashion.
She started her fashion line in 1998 with a loan from her father. In 2013, she was named Elizabeth Arden's first ever style director. In this role, Lonstein is a spokesperson and advisor for the brand.
She has also worked with Club Monaco and QVC. She remains the creative director of her label Shoshanna to this day.
She also has a clothing collection called 'Shop Shoshanna'.
You can see all the looks on Instagram. Kelly Ripa even recently wore one of her looks on Live With Kelly and Ryan.
Amy Lamare is a Los Angeles based freelance writer covering entertainment, pop culture, beauty, fashion, fitness, technology, and the intersection of technology, business, and philanthropy. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on July 23, 2019 and was updated with the latest information.