Suzanne Chase, born Susan Hewitt in 1949, is best known as the first wife of American comedian and actor Chevy Chase. They married on February 23, 1973, in New York City and divorced on February 1, 1976, after three years together. They had no children. After the divorce, Suzanne completely withdrew from public life and has remained a private figure ever since.
Suzanne Chase is a private American woman whose name entered the public eye solely through her marriage to comedian Chevy Chase. Born as Susan Hewitt in 1949, she married Chevy at a time when his career was just beginning to take shape, long before he became a household name through Saturday Night Live and blockbuster films. Their marriage lasted three years, ending in divorce in 1976. Unlike many celebrity spouses who seek media attention or write memoirs, Suzanne made the remarkable choice to disappear entirely from the spotlight. In nearly five decades since her divorce, she has never given an interview, never shared her side of the story, and never re-entered public life. Her silent dignity, combined with the mystery surrounding her life, continues to fascinate people around the world who search for answers about the woman Chevy Chase loved before fame changed everything.
Quick Bio Table
| Detail | Information |
| Full Name | Susan Hewitt (known as Suzanne Chase) |
| Born | 1949, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Famous For | First wife of comedian Chevy Chase |
| Married | February 23, 1973 |
| Divorced | February 1, 1976 |
| Marriage Duration | 3 years |
| Children | None |
| Ex-Husband | Chevy Chase (Cornelius Crane Chase) |
| Current Status | Private life, whereabouts unknown |
Who Is Suzanne Chase?
Suzanne Chase is an American woman who became publicly known as the first wife of famous comedian and actor Chevy Chase. Her real birth name is Susan Hewitt, a detail that many people overlook when searching for information about her. She was born in 1949 in the United States, though the exact city or state of her birth has never been confirmed in any public record. When she married Chevy Chase in 1973, she took his last name and became known as Suzanne Chase — the name that millions of curious readers search for online to this day.
What makes the story of Suzanne Chase so compelling is not what is known about her, but rather what is not known. She is a woman who existed at the edges of Hollywood history, close enough to fame to be touched by it, yet far enough away to remain entirely mysterious. She never pursued celebrity, never wrote a book about her marriage, and never appeared on a talk show to share her experience. In a media landscape where silence is increasingly rare, her decades-long quiet is what defines her story most powerfully.
Early Life and Background of Susan Hewitt
Very little is known about Suzanne Chase’s early life before she became connected to Chevy Chase. Her birth name, Susan Hewitt, places her in a world entirely separate from the entertainment industry. She was born in 1949, making her roughly 19 years old when she first crossed paths with the man who would become her husband. Her upbringing, family background, and educational history have never entered the public record, a fact that sets her apart even from other celebrity ex-wives of that era.
This absence of early biographical information was not accidental. Suzanne appears to have been an intensely private person from a young age, someone who did not seek attention and did not invite public scrutiny into her personal world. Before social media, before the internet age, people from ordinary backgrounds could still live quietly even when briefly touched by fame. Susan Hewitt was one of those people, and her deliberate privacy in her early years foreshadowed the complete silence she would choose after her divorce.
How Did Suzanne Chase Meet Chevy Chase?
The story of how Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase first met is one of the more human and touching details in this otherwise mysterious biography. According to Chevy Chase’s own biography, written by Rena Fruchter and titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the two met at a concert performance that Chevy was putting on with his band, Chameleon Church. At the time, Chevy was around 25 years old and Susan Hewitt was just 19, a young woman attending a live music event and crossing paths with an ambitious young performer.
This meeting happened long before Chevy Chase was a household name. He was not a star at that point — he was simply a young, energetic musician and comedian working his way through New York’s creative scene. There were no cameras, no publicists, and no red carpets involved in their early courtship. Their relationship grew organically from that first encounter, built on the personal chemistry between two young people who knew each other before success arrived and changed everything.
The Marriage — February 23, 1973
Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase officially married on February 23, 1973, in New York City. The ceremony was intimate and private, attended only by close friends and family members. There were no elaborate celebrity wedding productions, no magazine spreads, and no public announcements that brought the event to wider attention. The wedding reflected the personalities of both people involved — particularly Suzanne’s preference for simplicity and discretion over spectacle.
According to Chevy Chase’s biography, the circumstances surrounding the decision to marry were complicated. Chevy revealed that Susan became pregnant during their relationship and agreed to end the pregnancy on the condition that he would marry her. This is a deeply personal detail that Chevy himself chose to disclose years later, while Suzanne has never spoken about it publicly. Their marriage thus began with significant emotional weight and personal sacrifice, which may partly explain the pressures that eventually led to its end.
Life During the Marriage — Three Years Together
The three years that Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase spent together as husband and wife coincided with a transformative period in Chevy’s professional life. When they married in 1973, he was still building his reputation in comedy. By the time they divorced in 1976, he was on the verge of becoming one of America’s most famous comedians. Suzanne stood beside him through this entire transitional phase, witnessing his ambitions, his struggles, and his early successes from the closest possible vantage point.
During their marriage, the couple reportedly lived relatively quietly without major public incidents or media attention. Suzanne continued to maintain the low profile that had always defined her, even as Chevy’s star began to rise. The couple did not have any children together during this period, though whether this was a deliberate choice or simply a matter of circumstance is not known. What is clear is that, from the outside at least, they functioned as a young married couple navigating life together during an exciting but uncertain time.
The Divorce — What Really Happened in 1976
On February 1, 1976, the marriage between Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase officially ended in divorce. The split happened just as Chevy was preparing to launch himself into the national spotlight through Saturday Night Live. In his biography, Chevy Chase offered his version of events, claiming that Suzanne had an affair and simply left the marriage. He stated that she had an affair and that “was the end of that,” as quoted in Rena Fruchter’s biography of him.
However, Suzanne Chase has never responded to this account. In nearly fifty years since the divorce, she has given no interviews, made no public statements, and never offered her perspective on what led to the marriage ending. This silence means that only one side of the story — Chevy’s side — has ever been told. The full truth of what happened between them remains known only to Suzanne herself, locked away in a private life she has protected fiercely ever since.
Chevy Chase’s Rise to Fame After Suzanne
While Suzanne Chase quietly stepped away from public life, her ex-husband’s career exploded into one of the most celebrated in American comedy history. Chevy Chase joined the original cast of Saturday Night Live in 1975, and his Weekend Update segments made him a national phenomenon almost overnight. His deadpan delivery, physical comedy, and now-legendary opening line — “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” — became defining moments of 1970s American television.
After leaving SNL in 1976 — the same year as his divorce from Suzanne — Chevy transitioned into film. He starred in Foul Play alongside Goldie Hawn, earned a Golden Globe nomination, and then became a full-blown movie star through films like Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Fletch (1985), and many others. He won three Primetime Emmy Awards and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2017. The career that Suzanne had witnessed in its earliest stages went on to define an entire era of American entertainment.
Chevy Chase’s Second Wife — Jacqueline Carlin
Following his divorce from Suzanne Chase, Chevy Chase married actress Jacqueline Carlin on December 4, 1976 — just ten months after the divorce was finalized. This second marriage is an important part of the full picture for anyone researching Chevy’s personal life. Jacqueline Carlin was an actress who had appeared on Saturday Night Live, making her connection to the entertainment world much more visible than Suzanne’s had ever been.
However, this second marriage was troubled. Carlin filed for divorce 17 months after their wedding, reportedly claiming that Chase had threatened violence toward her. The marriage was dissolved on November 14, 1980. Jacqueline Carlin later passed away from cancer in 2021, closing a chapter of Chevy’s personal history that had been marked by significant pain and difficulty. The contrast between Suzanne’s quiet exit from Chevy’s life and the turbulent end of his second marriage is stark and revealing.
Chevy Chase’s Third Wife — Jayni Luke Chase
Chevy Chase found lasting love with his third wife, Jayni Luke, whom he married in 1982. Unlike his first two marriages, this union has endured for over four decades, making it the defining relationship of his personal life. Together, Chevy and Jayni have three daughters: Cydney Cathalene Chase, Caley Leigh Chase, and Emily Evelyn Chase. Jayni has remained a constant and stabilizing presence throughout the later years of Chevy’s career and his ongoing health challenges.
The success of Chevy’s third marriage stands in sharp contrast to the brief and ultimately painful ending of his first marriage to Suzanne Chase. While Suzanne knew Chevy before fame, Jayni has shared his life through the full arc of his celebrity — the great successes, the public controversies, the health struggles, and the quieter years that followed the peak of his Hollywood prominence. For anyone trying to understand Chevy Chase as a complete person, all three of his marriages — beginning with Suzanne — are part of that full story.
Who Is Susan Hewitt? — The Woman Behind the Name
It is worth pausing to consider the complete identity of the woman known as Suzanne Chase. Her real name, Susan Hewitt, is the name she was born with and the name she presumably returned to after her divorce. The name “Suzanne Chase” was a product of her marriage — a name she carried for three years before resuming her private life under her original identity. This distinction matters because it reminds us that Suzanne Chase was always fundamentally Susan Hewitt: a private American woman with her own history, her own values, and her own reasons for the choices she made.
Susan Hewitt was never an actress, never a public figure, and never someone who sought fame on her own terms. She was a young woman of 19 who fell for a charming and ambitious young musician in New York City, married him at 23, and divorced him at 26. What happened to her after that is entirely unknown. She may have built a quiet career, raised a family, traveled, pursued interests, or simply lived the ordinary, contented life that the spotlight rarely reaches. Whatever she did, she did it entirely on her own terms and without asking anyone’s permission to be left alone.
Why Did Suzanne Chase Disappear from Public Life?
The question that most people want answered when they search for Suzanne Chase is a simple one: why did she disappear? The answer, though never spoken by Suzanne herself, seems to emerge from the evidence of her life choices. She was a private person before she met Chevy Chase, and she returned to being a private person after they parted. Fame, for her, was never the goal. It was an incidental consequence of loving someone who happened to become famous.
What is remarkable is that she maintained this privacy through decades during which Chevy Chase remained a globally recognized celebrity. At any point during the 1980s, 1990s, or beyond, Suzanne could have sold her story, given an interview, or written a memoir. The market for such a story was always there. She never took that opportunity — not once in nearly fifty years. This steadfast refusal to exploit her connection to celebrity defines her more clearly than any biography ever could. Her silence is, paradoxically, the loudest statement she ever made.
The Mystery of Suzanne Chase’s Life After Divorce
After the divorce was finalized in February 1976, Suzanne Chase essentially vanished from any traceable public record. There are no confirmed reports of subsequent marriages, no news articles bearing her name in any significant context, and no social media presence that can be reliably attributed to her. She became, in the language of the internet age, a ghost — someone who existed fully and completely but left almost no digital footprint behind.
This disappearance was not the result of tragedy or hardship, as far as anyone can tell. It was simply the natural outcome of a deeply private person returning to the life she had always preferred. In the pre-internet era of the 1970s and 1980s, it was far easier to disappear from public consciousness than it is today. Suzanne took full advantage of that era’s privacy, stepping away quietly and staying away permanently. Today, she would be around 76 years old, and whether she is still alive remains unconfirmed by any public source.
What Chevy Chase Said About Suzanne in His Biography
The only substantial account of the marriage between Chevy Chase and Suzanne Chase that has ever entered the public record comes from Chevy’s own biography. In I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, written by Rena Fruchter, Chevy revealed several details about the relationship that had never been publicly discussed before. He described meeting Susan at one of his concerts when she was 19. He recounted the circumstances of the pregnancy and the decision to marry. And he offered his explanation for the divorce: that she had an affair and left.
It must be emphasized that this is entirely one person’s account. Chevy Chase told his truth as he remembered it or chose to share it. Suzanne Chase — Susan Hewitt — has never confirmed, denied, or elaborated on any of these claims. In the world of memoir and celebrity biography, that silence is significant. It does not mean Chevy was wrong, but it also does not mean he was entirely right. The complete truth of their marriage and divorce belongs to both of them, and only one of them has ever spoken.
The Cultural Significance of Suzanne Chase’s Story
In an age when celebrity culture demands transparency, confessionals, and constant self-disclosure, the story of Suzanne Chase carries a quiet cultural significance. She represents something almost extinct in modern media: the celebrity-adjacent figure who simply chooses not to participate. No podcast, no memoir, no “where are they now” television special. Just deliberate, sustained, unapologetic privacy that has now stretched across half a century.
Her story also reveals something important about how fame operated before the digital age. In the 1970s, being connected to a celebrity did not automatically make you a public property. Ordinary people could still walk away from the spotlight and reclaim their private lives without being endlessly pursued by tabloids or social media. Suzanne Chase did exactly that, and the fact that people are still searching for her today is perhaps the greatest testament to how powerfully the choice of silence can capture the human imagination.
Comparing the Three Women in Chevy Chase’s Life
Understanding Suzanne Chase becomes even richer when she is seen in the context of all three women who married Chevy Chase. Suzanne was the first — quiet, private, unknown, the one who knew him before the cameras found him. Jacqueline Carlin was the second — an actress herself, connected to SNL, whose marriage ended dramatically and whose own life concluded sadly with cancer in 2021. And Jayni Luke is the third — the enduring partner who has shared four decades of life with Chevy through his greatest successes and deepest struggles.
Each of these three women represents a different chapter of Chevy Chase’s personal life. Suzanne was the foundation — the first experience of marriage, built before fame, ended before Hollywood could shape it. Her influence on who Chevy became as a person is impossible to measure precisely, but the fact that Chevy’s divorce from her coincided with his most self-destructive period — by his own admission, he turned to alcohol and drugs after the split — suggests it left a lasting wound. She was not just a footnote. She was the beginning of his story.
Susan Hewitt, Chevy Chase First Wife, and Related Searches
People searching for Suzanne Chase often use related search terms that reveal the breadth of public curiosity about her story. Common related searches include “Susan Hewitt Chevy Chase,” “Chevy Chase first wife,” “Chevy Chase marriages,” “who was Chevy Chase married to first,” and “Suzanne Chase whereabouts 2024 and 2025.” Each of these searches leads back to the same central mystery: a woman who touched the edges of American comedy history and then chose to disappear entirely.
The related keyword “Susan Hewitt” is particularly significant because it is the name that Suzanne actually lived under for most of her life — before and, presumably, after the marriage. For researchers trying to trace her history, Susan Hewitt is the name that would appear in any original documents. The name Suzanne Chase exists primarily in the celebrity media world, while Susan Hewitt is the name of the real woman who lived a real life beyond those few years of public adjacency.
What We Can Learn from Suzanne Chase’s Story
The story of Suzanne Chase — however incomplete it may be — carries genuine lessons for the modern world. In an era defined by oversharing, public confessionals, and the relentless commodification of personal experience, she stands as a quiet counterexample. She had a story worth telling by the standards of celebrity media. She had access to an audience that would have listened. And she chose silence anyway — not because she was ashamed or hiding, but apparently because she simply valued her own private life more than any platform fame might have offered.
Her story also reminds us that behind every famous person there are people who loved them before the fame arrived, who shared their ordinary struggles, and who then stepped quietly aside when the spotlight narrowed to a single face. These people rarely get their own chapters in history. Suzanne Chase did not get a chapter either — but the mystery she left behind has become its own kind of legacy, one built entirely out of absence and choice. That is, in its own way, extraordinary.
Conclusion
The story of Suzanne Chase is, at its heart, a story about choice. She chose a private young man at a concert in New York. She chose to marry him. She chose, when the marriage ended, to walk away entirely from the life that proximity to his fame might have offered. And she chose, in the decades that followed, never to speak. Each of those choices reveals a person of strong character and deep conviction — someone who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted, regardless of what the world around her expected.
Today, Suzanne Chase — Susan Hewitt — remains one of the most quietly fascinating figures in the orbit of American celebrity culture. She is not famous. She is not a celebrity. But she is unforgettable precisely because she refused to be. In a world that rewards noise, she chose silence. In a culture that profits from exposure, she chose privacy. And in doing so, she created the most compelling kind of mystery — the kind that comes not from secrets or scandals, but simply from the dignity of a life lived entirely on one’s own terms.
FAQs — Frequently Asked Questions About Suzanne Chase
Q1. Who is Suzanne Chase?
Suzanne Chase, whose real name is Susan Hewitt, is best known as the first wife of American comedian and actor Chevy Chase. They were married from 1973 to 1976 in New York City.
Q2. When did Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase get married?
They married on February 23, 1973, in an intimate ceremony in New York City attended by close friends and family members.
Q3. Why did Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase divorce?
According to Chevy Chase’s biography, he claimed that Suzanne had an affair and left the marriage. Suzanne has never publicly responded to or confirmed this account.
Q4. Did Suzanne Chase and Chevy Chase have any children?
No. The couple did not have any children together during their three-year marriage from 1973 to 1976.
Q5. Where is Suzanne Chase now?
Suzanne Chase’s current whereabouts are unknown. She has maintained complete privacy since her divorce in 1976 and has never given any public interviews or made any public appearances.
Q6. What is Suzanne Chase’s real name?
Her birth name is Susan Hewitt. She adopted the name Suzanne Chase after marrying Chevy Chase in 1973 and is assumed to have returned to her original name after the divorce.
Q7. How many times was Chevy Chase married?
Chevy Chase has been married three times: first to Suzanne Chase (Susan Hewitt) from 1973 to 1976, then to actress Jacqueline Carlin from 1976 to 1980, and finally to Jayni Luke Chase from 1982 to the present.
Fore more info: Uktimeinsider.co.uk
