Back in May in episode 802 of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn interviewed Ret. Navy SEAL and CIA contractor Shawn Ryan. Their candid and emotional sit-down immediately became one of her favorite interviews of all time, and she didn’t hesitate when he invited her to be a guest on The Shawn Ryan Show.
The interview, which was filmed at Ryan’s studio last month, ran nearly four hours and touched on everything from Megyn’s experience with sexual harassment and her career in media to her family life and faith.
At one point, Ryan asked Megyn about her relationship with her husband, Doug Brunt, and she opened up about the timing of their courtship and why she was so taken aback when he proposed to her.
[Editor’s Note: The conversation about marriage begins around the 1 hour, 35 minute mark.]
How They Met
As Megyn has shared before, she and Doug were set up on a blind date when she was a young reporter at Fox News. The way that setup came about, however, was anything but normal. A publicist who had connections to Doug’s business at the time and the media industry essentially pitched him to Megyn in a cold email.
“It’s kind of a great story because this woman who did PR work for his firm sent me an email saying, ‘Megyn, I have no idea what your situation is, but I know this great guy.’ She gave me his resume, like, ‘He went to Duke. He went to Georgetown for his MBA. He’s great looking. We all love this guy,'” Megyn explained. “I had just gotten out of my first marriage, and I almost deleted the email. I literally had the finger on the ‘delete’ button and at the last second something made me hit ‘save’ instead.”
Apparently the woman had been traveling with Doug when they saw Megyn doing a report on Fox News about the Duke lacrosse scandal. That got them talking about the story – and Megyn – which is what she believes prompted the email.
Megyn may have saved the email, but she had some serious reservations. “It’s just so crazy because Doug came into my life when he was 34 years old. He did have that nice resume, he was running a company, he came from a very nice Philadelphia family… he’d never been married, he’s very good looking,” Megyn noted. “And I was like, ‘He’s gay.’ ‘He’s a serial killer.’ ‘He has a secret wife’… Every lady knows that kind of guy doesn’t just come to you after your divorce when you are 34 or 35 years old.”
Even so, she agreed to the blind date. “I was like, I guess I can give it a try until I find the bodies buried in the basement… We’ll have a good run until then,” she joked. “We went on our first date, and I brought a friend who hid… at the end of the bar making sure he wasn’t a freak stalker, and he wasn’t a freak stalker. He was kind of nerdy actually in a really sweet way, and we hit it off instantly.”
The Proposal
They started dating in July 2006 and were engaged the following September. “He took me to the end of the dock in the Jersey town where he grew up going in the summers,” she recalled. “He got down on one knee and proposed with a big fake $0.25 ring.”
She called the moment “scary” because she didn’t see it coming. “I was not thinking about getting remarried. I had just gotten a divorce. It was a total surprise,” she said. “He ran it by my mom and my mom was like, ‘Have you run this by Megyn because I’m not sure.'”
And yet she has come to see the timing like she sees the game of mahjong. “I’m learning how to play mahjong… and you know when you get the little tile you have to say whether you want it or not. There are no do-overs,” Megyn explained. “So, the proposal might have been a little early for me, but, in retrospect, I thank God I said yes because I don’t know if we would have had Thatcher… my third kid [otherwise].”
Megyn said she is so grateful for Doug’s readiness. “I had him when I was 42. That’s already kind of old. What if I had waited? Maybe there wouldn’t be a Thatcher,” she said. “Doug’s instincts were dead on.”
Marriage Advice
With some 16 years of marriage under their belt, Ryan asked Megyn about the keys to a successful union. “I definitely think it’s using your most generous lens on your partner and trying to interpret all behaviors through the lens of, ‘He loves me and I love him,'” Megyn concluded. “That helps with so many things.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interviews with Ryan in episode 129 of The Shawn Ryan Show and episode 802 of The Megyn Kelly Show.