Chelsea Handler's Siblings: All About Her 5 Brothers and Sisters

Chelsea Handler is the youngest of her tight-knit group

Chelsea Handler isn't one to shy away from sharing personal details — especially when it comes to her family.

The comedian, actress, writer, and television host told PEOPLE she feels blessed to have grown up as the youngest of six. She has two older sisters, Shoshanna and Simone, and three older brothers, Chet, Glen and Roy. All six children were born to Rita, a homemaker, and Seymour Handler, a used-car salesman, and raised in Livingston, New Jersey.

While her siblings are the source of many hilarious anecdotes in Chelsea's stand-up routines and books, their upbringing wasn't without heartbreak.

Their eldest brother, Chet, died in 1984 during a hiking accident in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, when he was just 22, and their mother died after a long battle with cancer in 2006. Their father then died in 2018 at the age of 86. Chelsea told PEOPLE that grieving Chet's untimely death was especially hard on her family because "no one had the tools to deal with it."

“You would walk by my parents’ room and just hear them crying,” she said. “I was only 10, so my brother and sisters were, like, ‘Don’t even worry about her. She doesn’t even know what was going on.’ But of course I knew what was going on. I was so close with my brother.”

As tough as it was, that tragedy ultimately brought Chelsea closer to her brothers and sisters. She frequently shares old family photos on her social media and has included her siblings in a list of her favorite things in a 2022 interview with The New York Times.

"It’s really nice to have adult closeness with all of your siblings," she told the outlet. "They’re the only people in your life who understand exactly what you went through with your parents growing up. We’ve gotten closer and closer as we’ve gotten older. There are five of us. We’re a big pack, a unit. My most meaningful relationships are with my siblings."

So, who are Chelsea Handler's siblings? Here's everything to know about Shoshanna, Simone, Chet, Glen and Roy.

They grew up in New Jersey

The Handlers resided in Livingston, New Jersey, where Seymour made a living running a gas station and buying and selling used cars. Chelsea told Forbes in 2010 that the vehicles he brought home often stayed there. "Cars would pile up in our driveway for years at a time, and none were made in the decade in which we lived," she said.

The comedian told New Jersey Monthly that she still has fond memories of the area and that she frequently visits her brother Glen, who still lives there with his family. Outside of New Jersey, she and her siblings spent their summers at the family vacation home in Martha's Vineyard, which overlooked Katama Bay.

Chelsea's older siblings would bring her to parties

After losing Chet, the older Handler children took it upon themselves to keep an eye on their baby sister. Seeing as how they were all teenagers, this often involved carting her with them to their extra-curricular activities.

“They took care of me,” Chelsea told PEOPLE. “They took me everywhere, and I was a little rascal. They’d go to their high school parties and bring me because I had this attitude. I was their little entertainment wind-up doll.”

She said that even though Chet's death was "so tragic and awful," it ultimately led to her becoming closer to her siblings. "In hindsight it really kept us as a tight-knit group."

Chelsea would "make dinner" for Chet

In her 2019 memoir Life Will Be the Death of Me: ... and You Too!, Chelsea revealed how it wasn't until much later in her life that she realized she hadn't dealt with the pain of Chet's death. "If anybody talked about Chet or mentioned him, I'd just leave the room," she told USA Today in 2019. "I'd get on my bike, and I'd ride my bike for hours around the neighborhood. I could cry on my bike, but I wouldn't let anyone see me cry in person."

Going to therapy helped her work through those feelings and bring some happier memories to the surface — like when she would make him "dinner" after he'd come home from engineering school.

“I was, like, 7 or 8, and he would come home and I would make him cereal when he would come home late from school, from college, and I would put it in a bowl and act like I made him dinner, and look after him,” she told PEOPLE.

Roy, Shoshanna and Glen have worked with Chelsea

While Chelsea's siblings all have their own lives and careers, they've each taken a turn to work alongside their sister in some capacity. Roy worked for her and her production crew as a chef, and made multiple appearances on both After Lately and Chelsea Lately.

Roy, Shoshanna, and Glen also each wrote chapters in her 2011 book, Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me. Rather than the personal essays and stories she usually pens, this book was written by her inner circle as a compilation of all the "ruthless lies and practical jokes" Chelsea had told them over the years.

She told NPR: "This book to me is kind of like ... the end of the road as far as my practical jokes go, because I don't know who's ever going to believe anything I say again after this. It's like the girl who cried vodka."

Roy made history as a chef

Since graduating high school, Roy has worked in restaurants. He attended the Culinary Institute of America in 1988 and worked as an executive chef in fine dining establishments throughout his career. But his real claim to fame came in 2015 when he was asked to train the kitchen staff of a restaurant in Palau, an archipelago of islands in Micronesia.

Though the area wasn't well known for its culinary expertise, Roy accepted and brought fine dining to the country for the first time in its history. He still works as the executive chef of the restaurant, which is called Elilai.

Simone taught Chelsea a valuable lesson about outer space

In January 2023, Chelsea teased an anecdote from her Netflix stand-up special Revolution on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In it, she describes how she long believed that the sun and the moon were the same thing — until her sister Simone told her otherwise while riding elephants during a safari in Africa.

"My older sister Simone looked up at the sky, and she said, 'Chelsea, look up. It's not often you get to see the sun and the moon at the same time,' " Chelsea told host Jimmy Fallon. "I go, 'Wait, but they're always together,' and as soon as I said that, she turned around and she goes, 'What did you say?' And I was like, 'Oh, shut up, shut up, shut up.' I knew what I said was wrong."

Shoshanna owns a mobile ear-piercing business

Chelsea's other older sister is a registered nurse who runs a mobile ear-piercing business for kids in northern New Jersey. Her mission is to make first-time ear piercing experiences "private, professional, safe, personal, and fun!"

Her business' Instagram has over 3,000 followers and tons of photos showcasing her young clients with their new piercings and "certifications of bravery." Chelsea shouted out Simone's company on Instagram back in 2022, saying: "If you are looking to get your child’s ears pierced in the New Jersey area, my sister does just that and will come to your home with a certificate of bravery."

The Handler siblings have eight children between them

While Chelsea is open about not wanting children, many of her siblings have embraced parenthood. It's not totally clear which sibling has how many kids, but Chelsea posted a photo on Instagram that showed her with her eight nieces and nephews.

"All my nieces and nephews," she captioned the picture, in which a few of the kids have their eyes closed. "One or two is a little off."

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