Who Is Bari Weiss’ Wife? Her Marriage to Nellie Bowles & Relationship History
Bari Weiss has been thrust into the spotlight amid her role as CBS News’ editor-in-chief. She took over the position in October 2025 and has been making headlines for all of the major changes she’s made to the network during her tenure.
While Weiss is mostly in the public eye due to her professional life, there’s also a lot to break down about her personal life. Since 2020, Weiss has been married to her wife, Nellie Bowles, but she previously dated a well-known Saturday Night Live alum and has also been married before.
Scroll down for everything we know about Weiss’ love life, including her relationship history.
Who is Bari Weiss’ wife?
Bowles is a journalist. She and Weiss cofounded their media company The Free Press, which started as a newsletter called Common Sense, in 2021.
Prior to that, she worked for The New York Times from 2017 to 2022, covering technology and culture. Bowles was on a team that won the Gerald Loeb Award in Investigations and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award for her reporting on online child abuse.
After graduating Columbia University magna cum laude in 2010, Bowles also worked at The Guardian and as an on-air correspondent for HBO’s Vice News Tonight. She interned at the San Francisco Chronicle as well.
How did Bari Weiss meet her wife?
While Weiss and her wife both attended Columbia University, graduating in 2007 and 2010, respectively, it wasn’t until they were both working at The New York Times in 2018 that they met for the first time. Weiss was located in New York, while Bowles was a San Francisco correspondent for the publication.
“We met in the cafeteria,” Bowles said in an interview with American Jewish University. “Bari had written me about some story idea that was like ‘conservatives are being de-platformed on tech platforms, you should write about it.’ At the time, I was horrified by that idea. I was like, ‘Come on, a bunch of conservatives, that’s not true.’ But I was like, ‘I happen to be in New York, let’s get coffee.'”
Bowles said she was “smitten” from the first meeting. “I think for Nellie it was love at first sight,” Weiss added. “I thought she was intriguing and interesting, but was not exactly the profile of the kind of person that I was looking for and thought I would end up with.”
Bowles admitted that it took “six months of hard work on [her] end” to lock it down. Once the relationship began, Bowles began converting to Judaism. The couple married in 2020 at a strip mall in California.
“We basically decided, ‘Let’s not tell anyone because we want to have a huge party after COVID, and we don’t want to give anyone an excuse not to come.'” Weiss told Megyn Kelly the following year. “But it’s been a year, COVID’s still going on, and it became too difficult not to say, ‘She’s my wife!'”
Did Bari Weiss date Kate McKinnon?
Yes, Weiss and McKinnon dated on-and-off while they were both students at Columbia University. McKinnon graduated in 2006 with a degree in theatre, and Weiss graduated in 2007 with a history degree.
Does Bari Weiss have kids?
Yes, Weiss shares two children with Bowles. Their daughter was born in 2022, followed by a son in 2024.
Who else was Bari Weiss married to?
Prior to her relationship with Bowels, Weiss was married to Jason Kass, an environmental engineer, from 2013 to 2016.
In a 2019 profile for Vanity Fair, Weiss discussed her sexuality, noting, “I’ve been in love with both men and women. I’ve been ghosted by both men and women. I don’t trade on my sexual identity in that way for political points. I think that’s lame and it’s not my style.”
