Joan Rivers

Rivers was a member of the Reform synagogue Temple Emanu-El in New York and said she “love[d] Israel.”

Rivers’ first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores merchandise manager. The marriage lasted six months and was annulled on the basis that Sanger did not want children and had not informed Rivers before the wedding.

Rivers married Edgar Rosenberg on July 15, 1965, Their only child, Melissa Warburg Rosenberg, who goes by the name Melissa Rivers, was born on January 20, 1968. Joan Rivers had one grandson, Cooper, born Edgar Cooper Endicott in 2000.Along with his mother and grandmother, Cooper was featured in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? Rosenberg committed suicide in 1987, shortly after Rivers announced her intention to separate. Rivers would later describe her marriage to Rosenberg as a “total sham”, complaining bitterly about his treatment of her during their 22-year marriage. In a 2012 interview with Howard Stern, Rivers said she had several extramarital affairs when married to Rosenberg, including a one-night affair with actor Robert Mitchum in the 1960s and an affair with actor Gabriel Dell.

In her book Bouncing Back (1997) Rivers described how she developed bulimia nervosa and contemplated suicide. Eventually she recovered with counseling and the support of her family.

In 2002, Rivers told the Montreal Mirror that she was a Republican. On January 28, 2014, during a conversation between Rivers and Reza Farahan of the Shahs of Sunset, Melissa Rivers interjected to clarify that she and her mother were “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” Republicans.

Rivers was open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries and was a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin, beginning in 1983. She had her nose thinned while still at college; her next procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 (when she was in her thirties) as an attempt to further her career. When promoting her book, Men Are Stupid … And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery, described by The New York Times Magazine as “a detailed and mostly serious guide to eye lifts,[tummy tucks and other forms of plastic surgery“, she quipped: “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”