Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in New York City, New York, to Marian (Laskin), a teacher, and Donald Leibowitz, a physics professor.

He worked as a bartender, a caterer, a busboy and a children's puppeteer, and he began his stand-up comedy career at The Bitter End in New York in the late 1980s, where Woody Allen also got his start as a comedian.

He was unsure of whether to feel happy or appalled after he was voted the number one journalist in America by the American people, because his reports are delivered as satire.

He got married to Tracy McShane in November 2000 and they had two children together.