Jenny McCarthy House: Why She Left Los Angeles for the Chicago Suburbs

Jenny McCarthy spent two decades building a career in Los Angeles and then left it for the Fox Valley, a stretch of small river towns forty miles west of Chicago. She has been unusually direct about why. She grew up on Chicago’s South Side, and when her son reached primary school age, she wanted him raised somewhere children ride bikes until the streetlights come on and catch lightning bugs in the summer.

She rented in Geneva, Illinois, for a period, and after marrying Donnie Wahlberg in August 2014, the couple bought in neighbouring St. Charles, paying $1.1 million in 2015. In September 2026, they put that house on the market at $2,799,000, and McCarthy says they are moving to Las Vegas. This guide covers her documented Illinois property history, why the claims about a Los Angeles mansion do not hold up, and where she is heading next.

Who is Jenny McCarthy?

Jenny McCarthy is an American television personality, actress and author, born in Chicago in 1972 and raised on the city’s South Side. She came to prominence through Playboy and then MTV’s Singled Out in the mid-1990s, and has since worked across television, radio and publishing, including a period co-hosting The View, a long-running SiriusXM show, and a panellist role on The Masked Singer.

She has a son, Evan, from her first marriage to John Asher. She married Donnie Wahlberg on 31 August 2014, at the Hotel Baker in St. Charles, and his property record is covered separately on this site.

The relevant point is that her career has never required her to live in one place. Radio can be recorded remotely, and panel television is shot in short blocks. That flexibility is what made the move back to Illinois possible in the first place.

Why she left Los Angeles

McCarthy has given a consistent account of the decision across several interviews, most recently in January 2026 on The Katie Miller Podcast, where she said that Hollywood “gets everything wrong” about the rest of the country and that this was why she moved back to the Midwest.

Her explanation is domestic rather than political in origin. She has described wanting her son to grow up somewhere children ride their bikes until the streetlights come on, where there are lightning bugs to catch, and where childhood friendships last. She has put the timing around the point her son turned eight.

Whatever one makes of the broader argument, it is a rare case of a celebrity giving a specific, testable reason for a relocation rather than a vague statement about privacy. Other performers have made comparable moves out of Los Angeles for family reasons, including Kristin Cavallari, who left California for Tennessee.

The Geneva rental

Her first documented Illinois home after returning was in Geneva, a Fox River town next to St. Charles. She rented it rather than bought it, and the house sold in October 2014 for $1.8 million, with the sale covered by local Illinois press.

That figure is what the property fetched from its owner, not something McCarthy paid or received. It is included here because it is the only hard number attached to any home she has lived in, and because it is routinely misreported as her own purchase.

Renting first is a sensible way to test a move of that magnitude, and it is worth noting that she did not commit to buying until after the wedding.

The St. Charles house

After their August 2014 wedding, McCarthy and Wahlberg bought a house in St. Charles in 2015, a few minutes from Geneva. Local coverage at the time noted that the purchase was about establishing a permanent base for a combined household with three children between them, and that they had previously been living outside New York City for his television work.

The couple have shown the house publicly over the years and have renovated it repeatedly rather than treating it as finished.

For years, figures of around $1.6 million circulated on social media accounts and video channels that post celebrity house content, without citing any record. The 2026 listing coverage settled the question: the couple paid $1.1 million.

The Los Angeles claims

Several net-worth sites credit McCarthy with a Los Angeles mansion valued at over $10 million and a beachfront property in Malibu.

Neither claim is supported. No purchase, sale, listing, or property record connects her to either, and no mainstream outlet has reported one. She lived and worked in Los Angeles for many years, so owning property there at some point would be entirely unsurprising, but unsurprising is not documented, and a current $10 million holding is flatly inconsistent with a person who has spent more than a decade publicly explaining why she left the city.

Where does Jenny McCarthy live now?

St. Charles, Illinois, for now, but the couple is leaving.

On 24 September 2026, they listed the house at $2,799,000 with eXp Realty. When followers asked where they were going, McCarthy replied on Instagram: Vegas, not California. Wahlberg has been performing with New Kids on the Block in a residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM since June 2025. No purchase in Nevada has been reported, and this article will not guess at one.

The move ends more than a decade in the Fox Valley, a choice she was still defending in an interview as recently as January 2026.

The house itself, the listing, and his filming schedule for Boston Blue are covered in more detail in the account of Donnie Wahlberg’s home.

Sources

• Fox News on her January 2026 comments about leaving Los Angeles and her reasons for returning to the Midwest.
• Patch St. Charles on the family circumstances behind the St. Charles purchase, and Patch St. Charles on the September 2026 listing, the $1.1 million purchase in 2015 and the house’s size and age.
• Yahoo/People on her “Going to Vegas” comment and the Las Vegas residency.
• NBC Chicago on the August 2014 wedding at the Hotel Baker.
• Shaw Local on the Geneva house she rented and its October 2014 sale.
• Hello! on the St. Charles property’s grounds and features.