Long before her name reached the tabloids, Noelle Watters worked behind the scenes at Fox News, styling its on-air talent and, for a stretch, appearing on camera herself. She married one of the network’s rising hosts, Jesse Watters, in 2009. The marriage lasted a decade and ended over his affair with a younger colleague at the network. Years later, Watters would describe on live television how that relationship began, and the reaction was not what he expected.
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Who is Noelle Watters?
Noelle Watters, born Noelle Inguagiato, is a former fashion stylist and television producer who spent years at Fox News. She is best known as the first wife of Fox host Jesse Watters. The couple married in 2009 and divorced in 2019, after he admitted to an affair with a producer on his show.
The basic timeline is well documented:
- She met Jesse Watters around 2002, when both worked at Fox News.
- They married in 2009, and their twin daughters, Sophie and Ellie, were born in November 2011.
- She filed for divorce in October 2017.
- The divorce was finalized in March 2019.
Her years at Fox News
Before any of the headlines, Inguagiato had her own footing at the network. She worked on the styling and promotions side, dressing on-air talent, and that work eventually put her on camera. Around the middle of the 2000s she hosted a Fox web series about fashion, and she turned up in style segments on other shows. She stepped back from that work after her daughters were born and did not return.
That early exit is part of why so little of her later life is on the record. She had already moved away from on-air work by the time the scandal broke.
Marriage to Jesse Watters
Noelle and Jesse first crossed paths at Fox, where he was working on Bill O’Reilly’s production staff and she handled styling and promotions. They married in 2009 and had their twin daughters two years later. For most of the marriage the couple stayed out of the press, even as Watters grew into one of the network’s bigger draws, with his own show, “Watters’ World,” and a seat on the panel program “The Five.”
The affair and the divorce
The marriage came apart in 2017. Noelle filed for divorce that October. The following month, Watters went to Fox News human resources and disclosed that he was seeing Emma DiGiovine, a 25-year-old associate producer on his show.
Fox responded within a day and put its decision on the record:
“Within 24 hours of Jesse Watters voluntarily reporting to the Chief of Human Resources in November 2017 that he was in a consensual relationship with a woman on his staff, management met with both parties and a decision was made for the woman to be transferred to work on another program on the network where she currently remains.”
DiGiovine was moved to “The Ingraham Angle.” Watters kept his show and faced no discipline. The story reached the public in March 2018.
The split turned contentious in court. Noelle asked Watters to cover her legal fees, and the two fought over custody and how to divide what they owned. The case was heading to trial before the sides settled at the last moment. A court official later told reporters only that the two had called that morning to say the matter was resolved. The divorce was finalized in March 2019, the year that would have marked their tenth anniversary. Noelle was granted primary custody of the twins, and she went back to her maiden name.
The on-air tire story that backfired
Watters did not stay quiet about how the relationship with DiGiovine started. In April 2022, on “The Five,” he told his co-hosts that he had once let the air out of her tires so she would need a ride from him.
“When I was trying to get Emma to date me, the first thing I did was let the air out of her tires. She couldn’t go anywhere. She needed a lift. I said, ‘Hey, you need a lift?’ She hopped right in the car.”
He had still been married to Noelle when the incident he described took place. One person at the desk asked if he was serious. Another compared him to the Zodiac Killer. The clip traveled fast, the response was rough, and Watters dropped off the show for close to two weeks.
When he came back, he had an explanation ready. He said he had thrown his back out, and the network ran a photo of him on a hospital stretcher to back the claim. He called the episode “TireGate” and insisted the whole thing had been a joke. “That was a joke,” he said. “I never deflated anyone’s tires.”
Watters proposed to DiGiovine in August 2019 and married her that December at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida. Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Eric and Lara Trump were among the guests. He and Emma went on to have two children together.
Where is Noelle Watters now?
Here the trail goes cold. Since the divorce, she has given no interviews and made no public statements, and she has not answered the way her ex-husband keeps retelling their history on air.
Plenty of sites fill that silence with specifics: a job, a business, an estimated net worth, a current city. None of it traces back to credible reporting or to anyone who knows her. What can be confirmed ends with the divorce, and she has spent the years since out of public view.
The contrast is hard to miss. Watters built a bigger career and married the woman at the center of the story, and he still talks about how it started. His first wife went the other way. More than seven years after the divorce, the clearest thing on record about her is how little she has chosen to say.
