Noelle Watters: Inside Jesse Watters’ Ex-Wife’s Life, Career, and New Chapter as a Counselor

Noelle Watters spent over a decade behind the scenes at Fox News before her name started trending for a very different reason: her marriage to — and very public split from — primetime host Jesse Watters. But reducing her to “the ex-wife” misses most of the story. Today, she’s rebuilt her career entirely, trading network hallways for a counseling practice where she helps children and families work through some of life’s hardest moments, including the very kind she once lived through herself.

Here’s a complete, up-to-date look at who Noelle Watters is, where she came from, what happened in her marriage, and what she’s doing with her life now.

Who Is Noelle Watters?

Noelle Watters, born Noelle Inguagiato, is an American media professional turned licensed mental health counselor. She’s best known publicly for her decade-long marriage to Fox News host Jesse Watters and for the headline-making divorce that followed, but her own résumé spans wardrobe styling and producing at a major cable network to a second career rebuilt from the ground up in clinical counseling.

Early Life and Family Background

Noelle was born on May 5, 1976, in New York City to parents Peter and Rosemary Inguagiato. She grew up with Scottish-Irish roots in a middle-class family in the city, an upbringing that put her close to the fashion, media, and entertainment world she’d later work in. She’s kept most of her childhood and adolescence out of the public record, a pattern of privacy that continues to define her today.

Career at Fox News

Long before “Watters’ World” became a household name, Noelle was building her own career in television. She spent roughly a decade at Fox News, working as a senior editor and producer for Fox News Magazine and taking on wardrobe styling and lifestyle-segment work for the network. Her job put her in close contact with on-air talent and high-profile guests, styling and escorting personalities for shoots, premieres, and press events — the kind of behind-the-camera role that keeps a network running but rarely puts a name in the headlines.

That changed once she became Mrs. Watters.

Marriage to Jesse Watters

Noelle and Jesse Watters met around 2002, while both were working at Fox. They dated for several years before marrying in 2009. Two years later, on November 4, 2011, they welcomed twin daughters, Sophie and Elle. By most public accounts, Noelle stepped back from her day-to-day work at Fox not long after the twins arrived to focus on raising them, while Jesse’s on-air career kept climbing.

For several years, the Watters family kept a relatively low profile, with Jesse’s career being the public-facing side of the marriage.

The Affair and Divorce

In 2017, Noelle discovered that Jesse was having an affair with Emma DiGiovine, an associate producer who worked on his show and was roughly 26 years old at the time. Reports describe an unconventional start to that relationship, with Jesse later joking publicly about engineering a flat tire to get close to DiGiovine.

Noelle filed for divorce not long after learning of the affair, and the proceedings stretched on before being finalized in March 2019, closing out a marriage of roughly a decade. She was awarded primary custody of the twins and reverted to her maiden name, Inguagiato, choosing not to comment publicly on the details of the split. Jesse, for his part, got engaged to DiGiovine in August 2019 and married her that December in a Florida ceremony attended by several high-profile guests.

Life After Divorce: A New Career in Mental Health Counseling

Rather than staying tied to the entertainment industry or trading on her public profile, Noelle used the years after her divorce to retrain completely. She earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Long Island University and is now a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC).

She currently practices on Long Island, New York, working with a counseling practice that focuses on children, teens, and families. Her clinical interests include ADHD, anxiety, OCD, mood disorders, and behavioral challenges, and she works extensively with the LGBTQIA+ community. Notably, she’s also developed a specialty in helping families navigate divorce — a focus that carries an obvious, personal resonance given her own experience. Colleagues have described her as warm and easy for kids to open up to, even children who initially resist therapy.

It’s a striking second act: a woman whose own marriage ended in a very public way has built a career around helping other families get through their hardest transitions with less pain.

Noelle Watters Today

Noelle has stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight since her divorce. She hasn’t given high-profile interviews about the split, doesn’t appear to be active in the same media/entertainment circles she once worked in, and keeps her dating life — if any — private. Her public-facing identity today is built around her counseling work and, above all, her role as mother to her now-teenage twin daughters.

Final Thoughts

Noelle Watters’ story is really two stories in one: a media career built behind the scenes at one of the country’s biggest networks, and a second, harder-won career built after a painful and very public divorce. Rather than leaning into her connection to a famous ex-husband, she’s spent the years since building something separate — a counseling practice centered on helping kids and families through exactly the kind of upheaval she once faced herself. That choice says more about who she is than any headline about her marriage ever did.

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