Fran Drescher met Peter Marc Jacobson when she was 15 years old.
Born and raised in Queens, New York, they became close friends in high school and began dating soon after.
Drescher and Jacobson married in 1978, when they were 21, and both attended and later dropped out of Queens University.
The couple then moved to California and began writing their own sitcom. Drescher’s unique nasal voice is a “cash cow,” Jacobson told AOL.
“We made a career out of her voice… I wrote it and she said it,” he shared in 2012.
“Basically, Fran and I went from sitting in the basement watching sitcoms to writing sitcoms and we created The Nanny.”
The Nanny aired its first episode in 1993 and lasted six seasons, ending in 1999.
Jacobson wrote, directed and produced the sitcom, while Drescher of course starred as Fran Fine.
When Jacobson married Drescher, he had no idea he was gay.
“We’re living a heterosexual life,” the writer told Oprah in 2011. “I don’t have a side romance or anything like that. I think I’m straight.”
Jacobson first started going to therapy in the 80s, not because he questioned his sexuality — something he would later talk about with a professional — but because he and Drescher were victims of a violent crime.
In January 1985, before either of them became famous, two armed men broke into their Los Angeles home while a friend was visiting.
While one searched their property, the other tied up Jacobson and forced the writer to watch him rape Drescher and her friends at gunpoint.
Two men were later arrested and one is serving a life sentence.
While The Nanny was at the peak of its success, tabloids discovered and reported on the incident.
“People called my parents, they thought that just happened,” Drescher told the TV host.
“In a way, it was an opportunity, because at the time, I was in therapy and I was able to get in touch with a lot of emotions that I hadn’t really dealt with before,” she said. Okay”.
After the traumatic event, Jacobson put aside all thoughts about his gender.
“I was angry because I started thinking about it and I didn’t know what to do with it,” he said in the same interview.
“I kept trying to push it back.”
Doing so changed the writer’s behavior, which seriously affected his marriage with Drescher.
“Peter started having control issues which I found a bit suffocating,” the actress recalls.
“And only in retrospect do we now understand that he put a lot of effort into controlling his true self, his true direction.”
As time passed, Jacobson became more aware of his sexuality and acknowledged his wife, telling her that he was bisexual.
“Honestly, he didn’t want the marriage to end,” Drescher told Fox News in 2021.
“I need it to end. I need to find myself outside of the marriage and he needs to find himself outside of the marriage. He’s been mad at me for a while.”
The couple divorced in 1999. Jacobson moved to New York the day The Nanny ended and the couple did not speak for a year.
Although their marriage ended badly, a health scare brought them back together.
After two years of symptoms and misdiagnosis by eight doctors, Drescher was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2000. She required an immediate hysterectomy.
After surgery, Drescher was cancer-free.
The actress then wrote about her experience in her book Cancer Schmancer and told Jacobson she wanted to meet him in New York on her book tour.
“And that’s when he said to me, ‘I don’t want you to be left out if while you’re doing all of this someone says, ‘Did you know that your husband is now living as a homosexual? male?’” she told her ex-husband on Oprah.
This was the first time she heard that Jacobson was gay – not bisexual.
“We have since rebuilt our friendship,” Drescher said.
In 2011, the two began working together again in the sitcom called Happily Divorced.
The series lasted two seasons and was loosely based on their relationship – Drescher played a florist who discovers her husband of 18 years is gay.
Today, Drescher and Jacobson still call each other soul mates, just in a different sense. They vacation together, go to dinner together, do everything together.
“It was a deep love,” Jacobson said at the Hollywood Museum’s Real To Reel LGBTQ+ Awards.
In 2015, the actress was asked why she didn’t know her husband was gay.
“I have a gay art dealer, a gay dermatologistds, and are both single, today.
