Joy Tilk is a Los Angeles makeup artist who built a media company followed by millions of people, sold it in 2018, and has been married to former Baywatch actor Michael Bergin since 2004. Coverage of her tends to stop at the marriage and skip the company entirely.
In March 2004, The Times reported on Bergin’s own claims about an affair with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, one he said continued after her wedding to John F Kennedy Jr, drawn from his book The Other Man. His engagement to Tilk appeared in the same article, mentioned once, in the final line. The couple already had a son, Jesse, born in October 1999, and a daughter, Alana, born weeks earlier that February. Bergin and Tilk married on 24 September 2004.
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She built Hot Moms Club into a business with millions of followers
Before any of that, Tilk worked for years as a hair and makeup artist in film and television, credited on productions including the 1994 thriller Body Shot and the television movie Night of the Running Man. It was work spent making other people ready for the camera.
Less than a year after marrying Bergin, Tilk tried something with her own name on it. She and a fellow Los Angeles mother, Jessica Denay, launched a website called Hot Moms Club, choosing the name as a joke, with a third partner, Natalie Klein, involved from early on. A 2007 newspaper report described Tilk as the inspiration for the company’s logo. Membership had reached around 110,000 by 2009, according to Denay’s own account of the company’s history, and kept climbing from there. Tilk and Denay hosted a weekly show on XM radio starting in 2010, and the brand struck a deal with Joe’s Jeans that put a Hot Mom jean line into Macy’s and earned a mention in People magazine. Facebook membership passed 2.8 million by 2015. Tilk sold her stake to Moms.com in 2018, by which point the following had passed six million. Her own company biography now describes the sale as coming for “a substantial profit,” without giving a figure.
She’s now the marketing director at her husband’s company
When Tilk, who now goes professionally by Joy Bergin, stepped away from Hot Moms Club, she moved into marketing work at her husband’s real estate company, The Bergin Group, a role her own company profile ties directly to the social media experience she built running Hot Moms Club. Bergin has spoken about the arrangement himself, telling Digital Journal in 2024 that it is “really awesome to work side by side with my wife, Joy.” The marriage is still current: Tilk’s company biography was last updated in June 2026.
Their children have their own careers
Tilk and Bergin’s two children have built careers of their own.
- Their son, whose full name is officially registered as Jesse Tilk Bergin, played at Harvard Westlake School before pitching three seasons for UCLA. The Miami Marlins picked him in the 11th round of the 2021 draft and signed him for $125,000. He now pitches at the Double A level for the Marlins organisation, with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.
- Their daughter, Alana, is signed with the modelling agency Wilhelmina in Los Angeles and studies marketing at San Diego State University.
Why Joy Tilk is back in the news
The FX and Hulu series Love Story, based on Elizabeth Beller’s book about Bessette Kennedy’s life, dramatised the relationship between JFK Jr and Bessette Kennedy across nine episodes between February and March 2026, with actor Noah Fearnley playing Bergin. Interest in his wife has picked up again since, months after the series finished airing.
Fearnley and Bergin met in person that March 2026, when the actor visited Bergin’s real estate office in Los Angeles for his birthday. Bergin introduced him around the office and to his wife, and the two men blew out birthday candles on a set of cupcakes together. Bergin also gave Fearnley an autographed poster from one of his old Calvin Klein shoots, inscribed: “To Noah, the younger, better looking myself, I hate you.” Tilk stood there for the introduction, watching her husband meet the actor now playing him on screen.
