Dr. Thomas O’Brien and his wife Ruth Reardon O’Brien, the parents of late-night comedian Conan O’Brien, passed away three days apart. Thomas was 95, and Ruth was 92.
Thomas died on Monday, Dec. 9, after “his health had been failing,” according to The Boston Globe. His wife passed away “peacefully” on Dec. 12, according to an obituary from the Bell-O’Dea Funeral Home in Brookline, Mass.
The couple was married for 66 years and had six children together, including Conan, 61, who said his father inspired his love of stand-up comedy.
PEOPLE contacted Conan for a comment, but the former Tonight Show host spoke about his father’s death to The Globe.
Thomas introduced his children to comedy classics like Jack Benny, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers. “The loudest I’ve ever heard anybody laugh was sitting next to him in a theater watching Peter Sellers in a Pink Panther movie,” Conan remembered. “[My dad] was often the funniest guy in the room. And when he would laugh, his whole body would shake and he would almost hug himself.”
Thomas was best known for his work in antimicrobial drug resistance research and was the first director of the infectious diseases division at what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His career lasted more than 60 years at Brigham and Women’s and Harvard Medical School, where he was an associate professor. He retired in 2019 at the age of 90.
“Science says there’s no such thing as perpetual motion, but my father proved that wrong,” Conan, who has kids Neve, 21, and Beckett, 19, with his wife Liza, said. “My father was always moving. And he was interested in everything — absolutely everything.”
Conan also said about his father, “[He] had a huge love for ideas, people, and the crazy variety and irony of life. He wanted to go everywhere, meet everyone, see everything, taste everything.”
“For the rest of my life, I’ll be hearing from people who want to talk to me about my dad,” Conan 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 is this guy? He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met.'”
Ruth, meanwhile, attended Yale Law School as one of only four women in her class. She worked as a law clerk for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and later became a real estate attorney at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Boston. In 1978, she became the second woman partner in the firm’s history. In 2017, she received the iRelaunch Pioneering Relauncher Award.
Thomas married Ruth in 1958 after meeting her through her brothers, who were his classmates.
In addition to Conan, the couple is survived by their sons Justin, Neal, and Luke, and daughters Kate and Jane, as well as nine grandchildren.
A funeral mass will be held for the couple on Wednesday, Dec. 18, in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
