Weird Things Everyone Ignores About Jenny McCarthy's Marriage

Jenny McCarthy is a former Playboy Playmate and 90s MTV star, who enjoyed a resurgence of fame when she briefly joined the cast of The View. Now, she hosts her own SiriusXM show and is married to Donnie Wahlberg, who is also something of a reborn celebrity. From the ashes of his New Kids on the Block days, he forged a successful acting career on the likes of Blue Bloods, and even managed to resuscitate the boy band into its own second act with a series of nostalgia tours. 

In other words, they're perfect for each other. But they also both have big, wacky personalities, which have led them to reveal some serious weirdness that goes on in their relationship. Here are the strange things about this unruly union.

If you were trying to explain the abbreviation "PDA" to an alien race and could only use photos, just about any public appearance made by Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg would do the trick. 

Their appearance at the 2016 American Music Awards was a prime example of their uncontrollable lust for each other, as Wahlberg practically shoved his tongue down McCarthy's throat right on the red carpet. Then there's McCarthy's infatuation with Wahlberg's butt. She declared it her favorite body part during a "Newlywed Game" style show for Us Weekly and made him brandish it to Andy Cohen during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, admitting she would enjoy seeing the Bravo host "violate" her man. Alrighty.

Though it clearly seems like sometimes McCarthy and Wahlberg are trying way too hard to showcase their infatuation, there are also times when it seems undeniably genuine. In a 2015 cover story for Splash, the author caught them in just such a moment, writing, "At this point in the interview there's a long pause. The newlyweds have honed in on each other and don't seem to realize anyone else is in the room — not the stylist primping McCarthy's hair or the photographer staging his next shot — and certainly not me, recorder light blinking red, waiting for an answer to my last question." Super sweet, right?

Fast forward a year to an appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, in which Donnie Loves Jenny stars replied to a question about whether they do it right after working out. "The smellier the better!" McCarthy said. "I love his pheromones. I'm addicted." Wow, and we're right back to gross again. Anyone else feel like they need a shower? Well, hold on, because it gets worse.

Aside from their relentless public foreplay — Morgan Freeman once told them to "get a room" after he caught them attacking each other's faces at the Emmys — Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy have gone so far as to make sure they can still get it on even if they're miles away from each other. Wahlberg revealed that he once gave McCarthy a custom-made "toy" that had his face on it, which is something nobody ever needed to know — to the point where we're sure even the fabricator of said toy (Hint: It's not Mattel) wishes they could forget about it.

McCarthy has also said that she feels like she never truly "made love" to anyone until she started getting Whalburger'd on the regular, telling Page Six, "But as you get older, you know what you like. Then you learn what making love really is when you meet your soulmate." While that sounds incredibly deep and meaningful, McCarthy offered this additional perspective on the subject during another Watch What Happens Live appearance (via In Touch): "First of all, he has the most beautiful p***s I've ever seen in my life. But you know what it is, he knows how to [use it]." We hear you, Jenny, loud and clear. You guys love to get it on. You can stop telling us any day now.

Hey, remember how Wahlberg and McCarthy really like to horizontal mamba? We've mentioned it a few times now. Anyway, this anecdote about the model thinking she lost her wedding ring doesn't seem all that strange at first. Lots of people have done that, but most of them did it because they accidentally dropped it down a drain or misplaced it after removing it to work near machinery that could rip off a finger if the ring got stuck. Want to take a stab at why McCarthy took hers off? 

To avoid a, um, dancing injury, of course. Don't worry, she explained the whole thing ... on TV. During an interview on Good Day NY (via HuffPost), McCarthy said, "We were staying in a hotel and you can't have a wedding ring on ... It's a little hard to get romantic with diamonds on your hand. I removed it and put it on the room service table and they came and turned down the room and the ring was gone." Wait, back up a second. Why can't you be romantic while wearing a wedding ring? Oh good, Wahlberg was also there to explain: "It was off because the diamonds scrape a little bit and she doesn't like scraping me and it was private time." Yep, we knew it was going there, and we kept reading. That's our fault. 

The ring was found wrapped up in the sheets in the hotel laundry room. However, there's still no sign of Wahlberg's dignity after he used the phrase "private time" on live television.

Another relationship revelation to come out of the aforementioned "smellier the better" Wendy Williams interview was the fact that these lovebirds also have a bunch of ink to forever commemorate their stinky love. Of course, right now you may be thinking, "While ill-advised, it's not that weird for lovers to get tattoos for one another." And you'd be right, except you'd probably be hard-pressed to find anyone who got one designed specifically for touching their lover's face, which is just what McCarthy said she did. She got "Love" tattooed on her index finger and "Donnie" tattooed on on her middle finger. Nope, that's not creepy at all, right?

And just to amplify the ick factor, Wahlberg chimed in and said, "She said she did it so she could see it on my face, but she was hoping it would lead to some Amber Rose/Kanye business," which is a reference to Rose's infamous claim that her ex-boyfriend, Kanye West, enjoyed foreplay that included having a finger inserted in his ... You can go ahead and Google that one for yourself.  

During a typical fawning-all-over-each-other appearance on Rachel Ray, McCarthy and Wahlberg opened up about the romantic vow renewal he planned for their three-year anniversary. He said he rented a theater and staged a candlelit performance by a cellist and guitarist while a "video presentation of all of their time together" was played. That sounds super romantic until you realize that they do this every year. Yup.

"I think it's a nice commitment to each other," McCarthy said of the arguably excessive tradition, adding, "With everyone so busy, and our schedules, like, we live in Illinois and New York, so we go back and forth every week, so to take that time and just commit again, it's really nice."

Just to put this into perspective, here are a few celebrity couples who also renewed their vows annually: Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott; Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey; and Heidi Klum and Seal. Not the greatest track record there. Seal even once admitted that the yearly rededication "kind of turned into a circus." Yikes.

This one is as weird as it sounds, and amazingly, has nothing at all to do with getting it on. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jenny McCarthy said that when they first started dating they "FaceTimed at least 17 times a day," which has now evolved into them doing it "every single night we're apart" and all night long while they sleep. "I sleep next to the phone and he sleeps and we wake up like that," she said.

Seriously, if they get up to pee, do they Snapchat the flush? There are middle schoolers reading this right now, going, "Woah, these two really need to cool it on the puppy love."  

You would think that a woman who's so infatuated with her man that she has multiple tattoos for him, an adult toy with his face on it, and must sleep with an open video conference of him snoring on her pillow, would be a tad jealous if another woman made a pass at him. But somehow, this isn't the case with McCarthy and Wahlberg, at least not when it comes to his adoring fans.

Wahlberg told Entertainment Tonight, "My wife doesn't get jealous, but she definitely notices things," like an overzealous concertgoer feeling up his infamous badonkadonk. Although that never poses a problem for MCarthy, who understands the infatuation, and would never "throw back at Donnie and blame him for doing anything." She continued, "The man is the most wonderful, honest, loving human being ever and the way he shares love with all his fans — how can I take that from them?

Did you read that, ladies? The next time you go to grab a handful of Wahlberg's "right stuff" in front of his wife, make sure you have on your NKOTB shirt, and you should be good.  

Though they've both been famous since Reebok Pumps were popular, it took decades for these two to find each other. The popular theory is talk show host Andy Cohen set them up by scheduling them to appear together as total strangers on Watch What Happens Live, but in reality, they met two years earlier when Jenny McCarthy was hosting Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2010, during which Donnie Wahlberg performed with NKOTB, according to Splash. 

Soon after that first WWHL taping, Wahlberg appeared on McCarthy's VH1 show, where the two flirted so openly that she later blogged about it, writing, "Let's just say we visually give 50 Shades of Grey a run for its money. It gets steamy. I mean like really steamy. Being turned on by a guy is always fun but to have it legitimately happen to you on TV is to be turned back into a 12-year-old." 

So they started dating right then, right? Well, sort of. 

Jenny McCarthy gave Donnie Wahlberg her number after they taped the aforementioned steamy segment on her VH1 show, but he played it extremely cool and hung back back for a while before hitting her up. "It took two weeks for him to call me back and I thought for sure he was playing for a different team, if you know what I'm saying," McCarthy told the Scott & Todd show (via Radar Online).

Armed with the now seemingly lifelong mission to disprove that borderline offensive suggestion, Wahlberg appeared on The View for McCarthy's debut show where, you'll never guess this: They made out in front of everyone! Co-host Barbara Walters was delighted. She told Entertainment Weekly, "The fact that she comes on with her boyfriend [is great]. A lot of people say, 'Don't discuss my personal life.' She comes on with him, they hug and kiss on the air!" 

Oh, Barbara, if you only knew how far this would go.

Mark Wahlberg and his wife, Rhea Durham, did not attend Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg's nuptials, which we're positive were full of awkwardly long make out sessions. Part of the reason this was so juicy was because rumors about Durham hating McCarthy have been around since the beginning of the first on-air butt grab. Both couples have long denied the rift, but a year after the wedding no-show, Durham showed a crack in the family's defensive wall when she tweeted — and quickly deleted — an obvious dig at McCarthy.

According to the Boston Globe, Durham's zinger went like this: "Don't u think after age 25 it might be strange for a woman to dye her hair pink, purple, green or any color of that sort???#needattention?" (McCarthy's hair was pink at this point.) Donnie, the world's second most prolific celebrity tweeter, saw it before the attempt to bury it and fired back: "Imagine the depth of pain somebody must be in, to be unkind to another human being." Durham quickly apologized, but the burn, coupled with the wedding no-show, continued to make tongues wag. 

Donnie tried to clear the whole thing up during a Howard Stern (via AOL) appearance, explaining that he and Mark have such crazy work schedules that they prioritize what little free time they have for family. Mark's daughter's birthday was the weekend of Donnie's wedding, and in fact, Donnie was absent from Mark's wedding because he was working. There was supposedly never any feud, and Mark even sent some good vibrations (Sorry.) via Twitter on the big day: "Congratulations @DonnieWahlberg and @JennyMcCarthy, so happy for you both today."

What's that? Oh right, the other brother. Bobby Wahlberg, who no one on Earth has ever heard of, also did not attend the wedding. Moving on.

You're probably thinking a reality show starring these two has to be the most natural extension of such a public relationship. In fact, it couldn't be more perfect unless it was called Please Stop Gnawing Her Face; We're Eating. That's a valid point, but remember, these two also have a seemingly deep connection buried under all that middle school PDA, and historically speaking, shoving a camera crew into the middle of that has not worked out well. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey know what we're talking about.

But don't worry, because while Donnie Loves Jenny ended abruptly after three seasons — due to McCarthy's son's desire to no longer participate — their relationship did not. Also, thanks to the loved-up couple's brief reality TV run, the world has been gifted with one of the most amazing marketing campaigns we've ever seen: some faux romance novel covers, featuring Donnie sporting a mullet and riding horseback, were made to promote it.

Married people live in suburbs all over the place. What's the big deal, right? Well, most married people aren't commuting more than 800 miles to and from work a couple times a week, so that's pretty strange. On an episode of Live with Kelly and Michael (via the Chicago Tribune), Donnie Wahlberg laid out the couple's hectic schedule. "We fly in (to New York) Sunday nights; we work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then we fly out, usually Wednesday night, but we live in the real main street USA of like, western Illinois," he said. And he's not kidding, they are bonafide suburbanites. In fact, they have a running joke about loving Applebee's that apparently became so popular the restaurant chain even offered to host their wedding.

So, since they've got the depressing Saturday night dinner down, they also dove headfirst into banal married life by religiously watching — and crying over — The Bachelor, and by McCarthy sending Wahlberg out to buy tampons. This is the kind of stuff normal couples do, because they don't have the option of employing live-in chefs or personal feminine hygiene shoppers, so why does a TV star and his former centerfold wife have to do it? 

The column Donnie writes for Splash offers a clue. "Fame is a very fortunate blessing, no matter how challenging life in a fish bowl may be. Fame is a privilege. It is not a right," he wrote, eventually simplifying his message to, "My dad once told me, when I was an aspiring musician as a teenager, 'Son, there's a term for awful behavior. It's called being an a**hole. Don't be one.'" You're weird, Donnie, and we don't need to hear about your sex life anymore, but that is a pretty cool sentiment right there.

Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg have been initiated into a secret club — a really, really secret club. According to Forbes, only five percent of people will ever receive their membership cards (which, in reality, totally don't exist — all you actually get are bragging rights). So, which club is it? Let's just say the couple isn't exactly splurging for AAA. This married pair joined the mile high club.

In a 2017 interview with Us Weekly, McCarthy and Wahlberg admitted that they got down and dirty on an airplane just a week before appearing in front of the magazine's cameras ... albeit for about the tenth time. Considering these two are notoriously heavy on the PDA — not to mention McCarthy's previously mentioned admission (via E! News) that they gave "50 Shades of Grey a run for its money" during an episode of her eponymous VH1 talk show — imagine the kind of stuff that happens in a cramped bathroom stall when no one's watching (though, considering McCarthy's support of JetSmarter, they probably flew private).

Wahlberg and McCarthy have both been married before, so you'd think they'd be a little more low key the second time around, but that was not the case. The couple absolutely lived it up on their wedding day. According to Us Weekly, these stars got hitched in a lavish Illinois ceremony just four months after getting engaged in 2014. There were thousands of flowers between the altar and the petals sprinkled down the aisle. It was completely beautiful and more traditional than we'd expect from a former Playboy playmate and boy bander. McCarthy's son Evan, from her previous marriage, even ended up being the one to walk her down the aisle – adorable!

Still, not everything about the celeb pairing's nuptials followed standard wedding protocol. McCarthy broke a cardinal superstition: she had Wahlberg help her pick out a dress. According to E! News, she picked up the traditional strapless gown with her then-fiancé during a trip to the bridal section at Bergdorf Goodman. Clearly, their love was strong enough to ward off whatever bad luck that might have caused.

Second marriages are not easy. They're even more likely to end in a divorce than a first marriage: According to The New York Times, 60 percent of second marriages fail. However, Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg actually believe that marriage is better the second time around. Who would have thought? Well, probably anyone who's ever been in the same room as them.

In an interview with ET Canada, Wahlberg admitted that he "had no idea how much better" his second marriage "would actually be." He credited his satisfaction with the fact that the couple constantly work on their relationship. McCarthy had a similar perspective: "It's not like we never have problems, but we know if [we do] it's an opportunity to look inside and say, 'Does this remind me of something from my past that I need to work on?'"

Perhaps the biggest secret to their successful marriage is the fact that they always put their relationship first — especially before their professional lives. This is a feat considering the pair's busy Hollywood schedule. McCarthy has a Sirius XM show among a number of other business ventures, like her Blondie line of pre-mixed cocktails. Meanwhile, Wahlberg has starred on the CBS drama Blue Bloods since 2010 while juggling tour dates with New Kids on the Block. You know what they say though, the second time's a charm. Well, maybe not, but it certainly is for the Wahlberg-McCarthys.