Glenn Weiss, Who Proposed During 2018 Emmys, Finally Gets Married — With Help From Nancy Pelosi
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Glenn Weiss, the director and producer who memorably proposed to his then-girlfriend Jan Friedlander Svendsen onstage at the 2018 Emmys, is finally a married man.
Four and half years after the two got engaged on live TV, when Weiss won an Emmy for directing that year’s Oscars, the couple eloped in San Francisco and got married on Feb. 14 in the Mayor’s Office in City Hall. In a typical splash of Hollywood magic, the officiant was none other than former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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The couple tells The Hollywood Reporter they first met Pelosi at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018 (which Weiss produced), when she came over to them to offer her congratulations on their engagement after seeing it happen on the Emmys.
“She told us she’d love to officiate our wedding and we smiled and walked away thinking that was a cool and fun conversation, but didn’t really think much more about it at the time,” Svendsen, who is chief creative officer of the Charity Network, says. They bumped into Pelosi a year later and she made the same offer.
The pandemic then put their wedding plans on hold, and rather than a big ceremony the pair decided to elope; after Weiss produced an Elton John concert at the White House last year, a friend offered to put them back in touch with the Speaker’s Office about officiating. Despite her busy schedule, a week before Valentine’s Day they got a call from Pelosi’s office saying, “How about next week at City Hall in San Francisco on Valentine’s Day?” They quickly jumped at the chance, despite the fact that Weiss is currently in the middle of preparing for the Oscars, which he’s once again executive producing and directing.
“The Speaker and her team couldn’t have been more thoughtful and wonderful to us,” Svendsen says. “She is a rockstar and we are in awe of her for her service and leadership to our country and also for conducting a beautiful wedding ceremony for us — and mostly for knowing to say ‘Mazel Tov’ at the end!”
The couple also found themselves in a full-circle moment when Weiss won the DGA Award on Feb. 18 for directing the 75th annual Tony Awards, announcing onstage that the two had finally gotten married.
“The 2018 Emmy win was surreal as we look back on it, and was clearly a life-changing experience; the win at this year’s DGA Awards, some four and a half years after proposing, but only four days after eloping, was the first opportunity” Weiss says he had to publicly thank Svendsen and call her his wife. “It became an unplanned moment that seems to have once again resonated with people and bookended this awards show love story.”
