Classic Reissue: That Time Jerry Seinfeld Dated a Teenager

Guys, what's the deal about a 38-year-old dating a high schooler?

This was the first ever issue of the Gossip Reading Club. I can’t remember why I chose this specific story to start this endeavour. It wasn’t a profile or interview, which is what would make up the lion’s share of work on this project. I’m not a fan of Seinfeld or his show. He wasn’t in the headlines at the time. I think I was just drawn to the ways that this specific article revealed the tools of gossip and how it functions within the sphere of traditional media. Well, now, Seinfeld is back in the headlines, largely for a flop Netflix movie and for whining about cancel culture and wokeness like every other has-been comic (and also for his wife’s suspect financial support of a pro-Israel counterprotest to student demonstrators at UCLA.) Given that Jerry is now endlessly complaining about how “dominant masculinity” is dead and how you couldn’t make Seinfeld today, it seemed like a good time to revisit this.

People. "The Game of Love." March 28, 1994. Karen S. Schneider.

(Read the profile here.)

In 1994, Jerry Seinfeld was unimpeachable. His record-breaking sitcom was in its fifth season and consistently pulling in around 29 million viewers every episode. While it would be a few years before the show finished its run at the top of the ratings, a feat accomplished by no other American series since The Andy Griffith Show, Seinfeld's status in history was secure. The man himself was everywhere too, a tabloid favorite and seemingly universally beloved figure. His love life didn't attract Brad Pitt levels of public intrigue but he was certainly making headlines (and would continue to do so when he met his now-wife Jessica after she'd returned to America from her Italian honeymoon with one of the Nederlanders.) But, of course, that's not what we're here to discuss. You know what's coming.

In 1993, Seinfeld met Shoshanna Lonstein. He was 38. She was 17, a high schooler still living with her family. As People said in the 1994 piece we're going to discuss today, "it could have been a skit on Seinfeld": the everyman male comedian pushing 40 and the schoolgirl who "captured his heart."