Conan O’Brien’s Parents Pass Away Days Apart

Conan O’Brien’s parents, Thomas O’Brien and Ruth Reardon O’Brien, have passed away within days of each other.

On Monday, December 9th, Thomas O’Brien died at the age of 95, after his health “had been failing,” according to The Boston Globe. Ruth Reardon O’Brien then passed away “​​peacefully” on Thursday, December 12th, at the age of 92.

Speaking to the Globe, Conan O’Brien described his father — an epidemiologist who pioneered antibiotic resistance research — as having “a voracious appetite for ideas and people and the crazy variety and irony of life. He wanted to go everywhere, meet everybody, see everything, taste everything.”

Thomas O’Brien and Ruth Reardon met through college classmates of the former, and were married in 1958. Throughout his career, Thomas raised awareness about the dangers posed by the overuse of antibiotics, and even co-founded the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

“For the rest of my time on earth I will be hearing from people who want to talk with me about my dad,” Conan O’Brien said. “I’ve never met anyone like him, and he happens to be my father. If I met him randomly in a hotel lobby, I’d think, ‘Who the hell is this guy? He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met.’”

Ruth Reardon O’Brien also lived an impressive life, graduating as one of four women in the Yale Law School class of 1956 and becoming a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray. Meanwhile, she also raised six children.

Recalling when his mother made partner at Ropes & Gray in a 2017 video, Conan O’Brien said it was “huge.” Describing his mother relaying the news to his maternal grandmother, he said, “You can imagine what that was like for a woman who had grown up in an era when Irish were discriminated against in Boston. My grandmother was watching her daughter, who went to Vassar and Yale on full scholarships, become a law partner. It was pretty emotional, pretty amazing.”

Reflecting on his parents and his upbringing in general, he said, “[Our] house was kinda madness sometimes — lovely madness, but madness still the same. I don’t know how they worked it out, but they worked it out pretty well.”

Both Thomas O’Brien and Ruth Reardon O’Brien will be honored with a ceremony on Wednesday, December 18th in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Earlier this year, Conan O’Brien’s show Conan O’Brien Must Go was picked up for a second season by Max, and earlier this month he was seen singing with an Austrian extreme metal band for the program. In March, he will host the 2025 Academy Awards.