Dane Cook Responds to Critics of His Relationship With 20-Year-Old Girlfriend Kelsi Taylor

Comedian Dane Cook is dating the much-younger Kelsi Taylor and joked about their age difference during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Friday night.

Cook, 46, and Taylor, 20, have been dating for almost two years. Because of their 26-year age gap, Cook has been criticized, something he acknowledged on the show.

“My girlfriend and I, we get a lot of crap from people because we have an age difference. I’m 46, and she’s 20,” the Arlington, Massachusetts-native said.

Members of the audience snickered at that remark, which prompted Cook to snap back, “I’m sure that wasn’t judgement at all.”

“Sometimes I actually find myself saying, ‘Where has she been all my life?’” Cook later told Kimmel. “And then I realize she wasn’t alive for the first 26 years of it.”

Cook added, “People are like, ‘You’re robbing the cradle. I was like, ‘She hasn’t slept in a cradle for, like, nine years. Relax.’”

Cook also told Kimmel he saw the moment New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady met supermodel Gisele Bundchen after the Patriots played the Chargers in San Diego. Cook said he was sitting with Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Bundchen during the game, helping Bundchen understand the rules of American football. After the game, they met Brady in the locker room.

“She’s beautiful, but then he’s beautiful, and when they got together, we all just felt so ugly at that moment. They were like White Walkers,” Cook said, referencing the Game of Thrones villains. “They just drained us of all our life energy and beauty.”

Cook was on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote his Tell It Like It Is Tour, which he hopes will be the first step in a comeback. The tour kicks off at the Paramount Theatre in Huntington, New York on Feb. 20 and includes stops in San Francisco, Boston, Milwaukee, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, New York City, Seattle and Los Angeles.

“Took a little time just to play every video game possible, and then I got bored and realized, you know what, I gotta pay my mortgage,” Cook told Kimmel. “But really, honestly, I put together some of the most dynamic, introspective, and yet still observational humor and worked on it out here in LA for the last couple of years, and now I’m bringing it to the masses.”

Taylor is a musician, and she released her EP Fear of Yourself last year.

“Kelsi is smart, kind, creative, loyal & honest,” Cook wrote in a Instagram Q&A last year. “As for me, I think Kelsi would [say] I’m tolerable. [Laughing out loud].”

Photo credit: Matthew Simmons/Getty Images for SBIFF