The first date was a catastrophe. Tracey McShane wouldn’t touch her food, so Jon Stewart ate it for her.
“I apparently nauseated her, she would not touch her food, so I threw it all down” — two giant burritos, hers and his.
They married in 2000. And when he finally asked her, he did it by having the crossword editor of the New York Times build him a puzzle.
Updated September 2026
How did Jon Stewart propose to his wife?
With a crossword. He went to Will Shortz, the crossword editor of the New York Times, and had him construct a personalised puzzle whose answers spelled out the proposal. Then he let her solve it.
What makes it land isn’t the grandeur. It’s that it wasn’t borrowed from anyone — it was just the thing they already did together.
“My wife and I — aside from the fact that we own a production company together and have two small children — believe it or not, doing crossword puzzles is a real bond for us.”
The story is well enough known by now that the Times itself ran a clue about it in 2026: “Comedian Stewart who proposed to his wife with a personalized crossword puzzle.”
How did Jon Stewart meet Tracey?
On the set of a film called Wishful Thinking, in lower Manhattan, in the mid-1990s.
A woman working on the production told him: “I know this girl who I think you would very much like.” He wrote the number down on a dollar bill — and then spent the dollar on cigarettes, and had to go back to the call sheet to find her details again.
Then came the burritos.
Tracey’s version of that evening, told years later, is rather kinder than his: “I think when he got a few drinks in me, it got me to finally speak.”
How long have Jon and Tracey Stewart been married?
Since 2000.
Who is Tracey Stewart?
She trained in design, and then changed course completely and qualified as a veterinary technician in 1999. Not a veterinarian — a vet tech, and she’s precise about the difference.
On why she did it: “The work gave me a kind of purpose in this world… And also, I felt macho.” Jon, she’s said, encouraged her to go and find “a job that made me cry.” She calls it the best job she ever had.
She wrote Do Unto Animals in 2015, and before that founded Moomah, a Tribeca children’s café that later became a digital magazine.
Do Jon and Tracey Stewart have children?
Two. Nathan, born in 2004, and Maggie, born in 2006. Both were conceived through IVF, something Tracey has spoken about publicly.
What is Jon Stewart’s farm?
There are actually two, and almost every article on earth muddles them together.
Bufflehead Farm — about 12 acres in Middletown, New Jersey — is the home and rescue property where they already lived. The sanctuary is a separate thing entirely: 45 acres, the historic Hockhockson Farm in Colts Neck, bought in 2016 and run in affiliation with Farm Sanctuary.
And the farm happened for the least glamorous reason imaginable. The house ran out of room.
Before they bought it, the household contained four dogs, four pigs, three rabbits, two guinea pigs, a parrot, a hamster, two fish and three horses kept elsewhere. Tracey’s own diagnosis: “I’m crazy. It means I have hoarding tendencies.”
She also once had a 1,500-pound steer named Ari mount her during a New York Times photo shoot. Her back hurt for two weeks.
Is Jon Stewart’s animal sanctuary open?
Nobody seems to know, and that’s the honest answer.
Colts Neck’s planning board gave preliminary approval in January 2017, with county and state approvals following. At the time, Tracey said it should open by 2018. Coverage of further approvals runs into late 2024. But no source confirms it’s actually open to the public today — so if you were thinking of visiting, check first.
Is Jon Stewart still on The Daily Show?
He is — one night a week.
He came back as Monday host and executive producer in February 2024, after The Problem With Jon Stewart was cancelled at Apple in October 2023. His deal was extended in October 2024, and again in November 2025, running through December 2026.
The renewals arrive one year at a time, against a background of Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount and a channel that’s been losing viewers for years. Stewart said publicly that he genuinely didn’t know whether he’d stay.
So far, he has.
What is Jon Stewart’s real name?
Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. He was born on 28 November 1962 in New York City.
What was The Problem With Jon Stewart?
His Apple TV+ series, and the thing he was doing instead of late-night television until it was cancelled in October 2023. He was back behind the Daily Show desk four months later.
What is Moomah?
Tracey Stewart’s first venture outside veterinary work — a children’s café in Tribeca, which she later relaunched as a digital magazine. It is the part of her CV that almost never gets mentioned, which is a shame, because it explains the farm: she has always built places rather than just worked in them.
What is Do Unto Animals?
Her book, published in 2015 and illustrated by Lisel Ashlock: Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better.
It came out the same year her husband left The Daily Show the first time — which tells you something about whose project the next decade was going to be.
