Conan O’Brien’s Parents Were the True Geniuses of the Family

Sad news in the world of late-night comedy. Conan O’Brien’s parents both passed away this week, within just three days of one another. The redheaded host’s father, Dr. Thomas O’Brien died on Monday at the age of 95, while his wife, 92-year-old Ruth Reardon O’Brien, died “peacefully” on Thursday.`

While much of the news of the O’Briens’ deaths has obviously been framed around their celebrity son, it turns out that they were incredibly impressive professionals in fields that in no way involved, say, having a meltdown on YouTube while rubbing hot sauce on your nipples. 

O’Brien’s mother, for example, was reportedly “one of just four women in her Yale Law School class.” She later clerked for a “former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, became a real estate attorney and was the second woman to become a partner at the renowned Ropes & Gray law firm in Boston.”

According to The Boston Globe, his father, Dr. O’Brien, was a respected epidemiologist who worked at Harvard Medical School and “served as the first director of the infectious diseases division at what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”

Amazingly, he was one of the very first medical voices to warn of “the increasing danger of antimicrobial resistance in a world growing ever more connected.” In response to the threat of “imprecise” antibiotic treatments creating “drug-resistant superbugs,” he helped to “pioneer” databases that allowed doctors to “respond quickly to outbreaks of antibiotic resistance.”

If all that wasn’t enough, early in his career, O’Brien created a device that allowed patients to undergo hemodialysis (a process in which “a machine filters wastes, salts and fluid from your blood when your kidneys are no longer healthy enough to do this work adequately”) multiple times in the “same vein site,” thus allowing for more frequent treatments and “improved” health outcomes.

Conan has talked a lot about his father over the years. On a recent episode of his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, the host explained how guest Alex Edelman’s dad was also a doctor, who happened to be friends with his dad. Edelman found out about this connection after appearing on Conan and receiving a call from his dad telling him that he had seen his set on “Dr. O’Brien’s son’s show.”

“We both fled that legitimate profession,” Conan said of their shared decision to not pursue medicine.

Although, to be fair, Conan did once take it upon himself to personally examine a sick staff member.

Conan did note that his father was also a comedy fan, revealing to the Globe that “the loudest I’ve ever heard anybody laugh was sitting next to him in a theater watching Peter Sellers in a Pink Panther movie.”

Dr. O’Brien’s medical background also led to some interesting creative feedback. While talking with Marc Maron for a 2011 episode of WTF, Conan called his dad a “brilliant guy” and recalled the time that he once performed a particularly “left brain” comedy bit during a show that his old man saw. “It’s funny,” Conan’s dad told him afterwards, “you’re making money off of something that really should be treated.”

“And I thought, that’s really the essence of what we’re all doing,” Conan added.