Conan O’Brien shares heartfelt tribute to parents after they die within days of each other

Comedian Conan O'Brien says his parents were "made for each other". Photo / Getty Images

Conan O’Brien has shared a touching tribute to his parents after they died within just days of each other.

In a heartbreaking double tragedy, the comedian’s dad, Dr Thomas F. O’Brien, died on December 9 at age 95. Three days later his mum, lawyer Ruth Reardon O’Brien, died at age 92.

Speaking out for the first time about his insurmountable loss, the former late-night TV host told the Boston Globe the couple, who were married for 66 years, were made for each other.

“I think what my mother and father saw in each other was that they were kindred spirits,” he said in the interview published on December 17. “They were incredibly hard working and disciplined.”

O’Brien, 61, also shared fond childhood memories he has growing up with his parents, who raised him and his five siblings – Neal, 64, Luke, 62, Kate, 60, Jane, 57, and Justin, 52 – in Brookline, Massachusetts.

“My mum was the one who really saw to it when we were little kids that we were fed and our clothes were laid out, and that we got to our dental appointments and medical appointments,” he said.

“She’s doing all this mum stuff and when that was done, rushing into a phone booth and becoming Ruth O’Brien, second woman partner at [law firm] Ropes & Gray.”

American TV star Conan O'Brien as Dr Aiden Archer in a recent episode of Shortland Street. Photo / South Pacific Pictures

The former talk show host also praised his father, a physician, epidemiologist and Harvard professor who co-founded the World Health Organisation’s Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

Dr O’Brien’s work required him to travel the world to help train and consult peers – and no one was more proud than his son.

“My dad was the dreamer,” O’Brien said. “My dad was the one who was saying, ‘I’m off to Peru with a change of clothes in my briefcase to try and launch this website for a hospital there high in the mountains’.”

Conan O'Brien at the HBO & Max Post-Emmy reception held in Los Angeles in September. Photo / Getty Images

But it was his parents’ compassion for others that he admired the most.

“If anyone was unhappy around my mum in a 50-mile radius, she thought it was incumbent on her to fix the problem,” he said. “It did not make her life easy, but it was very much a part of her Catholic drive – that ‘I have to be of service to people’. And good God, she was.”

As for his father, O’Brien said, “He cared deeply about people who were very different from him and from completely different backgrounds. That’s the real beauty of his legacy.”