Howard Stern and Bill Maher are “no longer friends,” according to Stern. The SiriusXM radio host told listeners (via Entertainment Weekly) that Maher made a “sexist” comment involving Stern’s first wife and “was actually dumping on me” during an episode of Maher’s “Club Random” podcast.
“He took a big shot at me,” Stern said. “Basically, he says, ‘Howard Stern always gets on the radio and says he loves his wife.’ I’ve never been criticized for this. He goes, ‘Haven’t we had enough of that? What about his first wife? I feel really bad for her.’”
Stern was married to Alison Berns from 1978 until 2008. He got remarried in 2008 to Beth Ostrosky Stern.
“What a sexist thing to say. What a convoluted, nutty thing to say,” Stern said. “He says it must hurt [Berns’] feelings that I’m in love with a different woman. It’s assuming that he knows something about my first marriage. That of course the man must be leaving the woman and the woman must be devastated and be sitting around pining away for her famous man.”
“He ought to shut his mouth! I mean, I don’t think I come on the air every day and say I love my wife,” Stern added. “But I thought it was a pretty positive message, especially with my audience, to say to guys, ‘Instead of ragging on our wives, how about talking how we appreciate and love them?’”
Stern said that he wrote an email to Maher seeking answers for why Maher would say such a comment, “but of course he never wrote me back.”
“I said, ‘Why don’t you give me a phone call? Why don’t you tell me what you think about my life and my marriage?’” Stern said. “I just wanted to see how brave he was. If he was brave enough to call me and actually get on the phone with me — and zero response.”
“I think I’m no longer friends with him,” Stern added. “I went out of my way to do that show. I don’t like doing TV shows.”
Stern once appeared on Maher’s HBO talk show “Real Time,” explaining, “I had years when I didn’t talk to him when we were not friends. I did the show as a favor to him because we were repairing a relationship.”
Whatever relationship Stern and Maher had after his “Real Time” interview appears to be done for now. Variety has reached out to Maher’s representatives for comment.
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