Who Is Tracey McShane? All About Jon Stewart’s Wife

Tracey McShane is an American author, former veterinary technician, graphic designer, and animal rights advocate. Many people know her name because she is the wife of comedian and television host Jon Stewart, but she built a full career of her own long before and long after their marriage in 2000.

Her best known work is the 2015 book Do Unto Animals, a friendly guide about how animals live and how people can make their lives better. The book became a New York Times bestseller. She also founded Moomah the Magazine and, with her husband, runs a farm sanctuary in New Jersey for rescued farm animals.

Quick Facts

Early Life and Education

Tracey McShane was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the state. From a young age she had two clear interests that stayed with her for life. She loved animals, and she loved making things. Art, design, and drawing were a big part of her early years, and that creative side later shaped her first career.

She studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco and also took design classes at Drexel University in Philadelphia. That training gave her a solid base in graphic design. After her studies, she started work as a professional graphic designer, creating visual work for different clients and projects.

Design paid the bills, but over time she felt that something was missing. In interviews over the years, the picture that comes out is of a person who liked the work but did not feel fully happy in it. Her real passion was animals, and she kept coming back to the idea of working with them directly. That feeling grew stronger after she met Jon Stewart, and he encouraged her to follow the interest she had held since childhood.

How She Met Jon Stewart

Tracey met Jon Stewart in the mid 1990s on a blind date set up by a mutual friend. At the time, Stewart was working on the film Wishful Thinking, and a production assistant on the set helped arrange the meeting. By many accounts, it was the first blind date for both of them.

There is a sweet detail that Tracey has shared about that period. Before the date, she had told her roommate that she wished she had a boyfriend who was as funny as Jon Stewart. She did not know that she was about to meet the man himself. The date went well, and the two started a relationship that lasted through the early years of Stewart’s rising television career.

The proposal became one of the most loved stories about the couple. Stewart knew Tracey was a big crossword fan, so he worked with Will Shortz, the crossword editor of The New York Times, to build a custom puzzle. The answers in the puzzle led to his marriage proposal. The couple announced their engagement in 1999 and married in November 2000. It was a private wedding, in line with how the couple has handled most of their personal life ever since.

That same period changed Stewart’s career as well. He became host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in 1999, a job he held until 2015 and later returned to part time in 2024. Through all of those busy years, Tracey was building the second half of her own career away from the studio lights.

From Graphic Design to Working With Animals

After Stewart started hosting The Daily Show, Tracey made a big change. With his support, she went back to school to study veterinary science. It was a complete shift from design work, but it matched what she had always wanted to do. She trained and then worked as a veterinary technician, including a period working at the Bronx Zoo in New York.

Working hands on with animals changed her view of the work. She was no longer only helping one animal at a time in a clinic or a zoo. She began to think about the bigger picture, about how farm animals are treated, how wild animals share space with people, and how small daily choices can make animal lives better. That wider view became the base for both her writing and her charity work.

She also became active with Farm Sanctuary, a national group that rescues farm animals and campaigns for better treatment. The link with Farm Sanctuary later became central to the farm project she built with her husband in New Jersey.

Moomah and the Book Do Unto Animals

Tracey also built projects for families and children. She founded Moomah, which began as a cafe and creative space for parents and children in New York and later continued as Moomah the Magazine, an online magazine. Moomah shared art projects, activities, and simple ways for families to connect with good causes. She also served as vice president of the Portrait Project, a non profit that connects children through art.

Her biggest public success came in 2015 with her book Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better, published under the name Tracey Stewart. The book is part practical guide, part memoir, and part call for kindness. It explains how to read dog and cat body language, how to help backyard wildlife such as bees and birds, and how farm animals think and feel.

The book, filled with hundreds of illustrations, reached the New York Times bestseller list and was also a USA Today bestseller. Readers liked its warm tone. It does not scold people. Instead, it shows small steps anyone can take, from building a bee house to choosing food with more care. Proceeds and attention from the book also helped support Farm Sanctuary work.

Life on the Farm in New Jersey

The farm work is now the center of the Stewarts’ life together. The couple first kept a smaller farm in New Jersey, often called Bufflehead Farm, and in 2016 they bought the historic Hockhockson Farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Reports at the time put the price at about 4 million dollars for the 45 acre property, which dates back to the late 1700s.

They turned the land into a sanctuary and education center for rescued animals, working in partnership with Farm Sanctuary. Cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and chickens that were rescued from slaughter, live markets, roadsides, and neglect cases live on the farm. Part of the land is used to grow crops to feed the animals, and the plan included a visitor and education side so people could learn about animal care and kinder farming.

Tracey leads much of the daily farm work through the Hockhockson Farm Foundation and shares updates through The Daily Squeal, the farm’s public page. People who have visited or worked with the project describe her as hands on, not just a name on the gate. For Tracey, the farm is the full circle of her story, from a child who loved animals, to a vet tech, to an author, to running a real home for animals with nowhere else to go.

Her own diet is part of that story too. She has said she does not eat animals, while her husband does, and that they presented both ways of eating to their children and let them decide for themselves. That open approach matches the tone of her book, firm in her own beliefs but respectful of others.

Family Life

Tracey and Jon Stewart have two children. Their son, Nathan Thomas Stewart, was born in 2004, and their daughter, Maggie Rose Stewart, was born in 2006. The couple has kept the children largely out of the public eye, and very few details about their schooling or private lives have been shared, which is a choice the family has held to for many years.

The family split their time between New York and New Jersey during the busiest Daily Show years, before the farm became a bigger part of daily life. After Stewart left the full time host job in 2015, the family’s public focus shifted with him, toward the farm, animal work, and his later advocacy for veterans and first responders, causes where Tracey has often appeared at his side in support.

FAQs

What does Tracey McShane do for a living?

She is an author and animal advocate. She worked earlier as a graphic designer and later as a veterinary technician, including at the Bronx Zoo. She founded Moomah the Magazine and co runs the Hockhockson Farm sanctuary in New Jersey with her husband.

When did Tracey McShane marry Jon Stewart?

They married in November 2000, after getting engaged in 1999. Jon Stewart proposed with the help of a custom crossword puzzle made with New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz.

What is Do Unto Animals about?

It is her 2015 book about how pets, backyard wildlife, and farm animals live, and the simple kind steps people can take to help them. It became a New York Times bestseller.

How many children do Tracey and Jon Stewart have?

They have two children, a son named Nathan Thomas, born in 2004, and a daughter named Maggie Rose, born in 2006.

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Final Thoughts

Tracey McShane is often introduced only as Jon Stewart’s wife, but her own record tells a fuller story. She changed careers in mid life to follow work she truly cared about, wrote a bestselling book that helped many readers see animals in a new way, and built a working sanctuary that gives rescued farm animals a safe home.

Her story is quiet compared with her husband’s television fame, and that seems to be by choice. She works where she believes she can do the most good, with animals, with families, and on the farm in New Jersey. For many readers, that steady and kind work is exactly what makes her worth knowing in her own right.

Featured photo: Jon Stewart – photo by Peabody Awards, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons