Comedian Jeff Foxworthy is a grandfather. The former Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? host shared the wonderful news on his Instagram page Sunday. His daughter, Juliane Foxworthy Corley, 27, and her husband, Brendan Corley, welcomed their first child. Foxworthy and his wife, Pamela Gregg, are also parents to daughter Jordan, 29.
“With the birth of my first grandchild, everybody else on the planet dropped one spot in my rankings this week,” Foxworthy, 62, wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of himself holding Juliane’s new baby. Thousands of Foxworthy’s fans were quick to join him to celebrate. “That’s awesome! Congratulations,” one fan wrote. “He is just precious,” another added. “Teaching him redneck jokes already I bet! Congratulations sir,” another joked.
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While Foxworthy has made a career out of telling jokes, being a father is one job he takes seriously. “It’s the most important job you have in life,” Foxworthy told Atlanta Parent in 2017. “One-hundred years from now, nobody will care what kind of job you had, what awards you’ve won, none of that matters. But they will care about what kind of kids you left behind.”
In the same interview, he described Pamela as the “glue that keeps” their family together. “When the girls were young, I almost exclusively drove them to school each day (his two daughters and his brother’s three, who lived next door),” Foxworthy explained. “I read to them at night. I liked talking with them and being with them. When they were school age, I would lease a plane and fly home after a club date so I could be there the next morning โ it gave me 100 days more a year with my kids. The other job I had was I wanted to show them in the way I treated their Mom how they should expect to be treated by a guy.”
Foxworthy made headlines in October when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that he and Pamela listed their four-acre estate at Country Club of the South in Johns Creek on the market for over $2.9 million. The home covers 14,000 square feet on the lot and was designed by Budd Holden. Foxworthy previously told the Journal-Constitution he and Pamela wanted to downsize after Juliane and Jordan moved out. They built a smaller home in Brookhaven and have a 3,000-acre farm in middle Georgia.
Foxworthy was also linked to a politically partisan social media meme during the 2020 presidential campaign in November that compared Democrats and Republicans, reports USA Today. The “fence test” list has circulated on social media for years and has been credited to other comedians as well. Foxworthy did not write it, as Snopes pointed out way back in 2013. Around that same time, Foxworthy also issued a statement confirming he did not write it.