Sarah Palin just became a grandmother for the second time—and she isn’t even 50. See more budding young grandparents.
Sarah Palin, now 47, just became a grandmother for the second time, Joe McGinniss reported Monday. McGinniss, who was briefly the Palins' neighbor in Alaska, said Kyla Grace Palin was born Sunday night to Palin’s son Track and his wife, Britta Hanson Palin. Track and Britta married in May.
The first time Palin became a young grandmother at 44, it was a scenario seemingly straight from Father of the Bride Part II—mother and child raising infants side by side under the same roof. Soon after being named John McCain’s running mate in 2008, Palin announced that her then-17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant. Palin herself had just given birth to her fifth child.
As if it wasn’t difficult enough to imagine Jim Carrey, the actor best known for bathroom humor and exaggerated facial expressions, as a father, the comedian became a grandpa in 2010, when he was 48. His 22-year-old daughter Jane gave birth to Jackson Riley Santana on February 26. Carrey’s first grandson was born into a family of performers—his father and Jane’s new husband, Alex Santana, goes by the stage name “Nitro” in a band called Blood Money. Young Jackson’s honorary grandmother, Carrey’s girlfriend Jenny McCarthy, was excited about his birth long before the world welcomed him. “I am going to rock as the grandma… I’m going to try to be there as a friend and a cool grandma.” And like any proud grandparent, Carrey was already kvelling about the boy—he posted a photo of Jackson on Twitter with the caption: “This is what 7 lbs. 11oz. of Calfornia dynomite looks like!” [sic]
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By the time she was 50, Whoopi Goldberg was a grandmother three times over. Her first granddaughter, Amarah Skye, arrived in 1989, when Goldberg’s 16-year-old daughter, Alexandrea (whom the Oscar-winning actress had at 18) gave birth. Alexandrea then added daughter Jerzey and son Mason to the brood. “My daughter [Alex] is a much better parent than she was raised around,” Goldberg admitted to People. “I wanted her to be my friend. Now we realize [kids] need that structure!” The 54-year-old View host hopes her grandkids—now 20, 14, and 11—hold off on expanding the family any time soon. “I made it clear that should the oldest one decide that was a good possibility that I would yank her tubes out with my bare hands,” she joked to The Daily Mail. “I accepted the grandmother thing in my thirties, but great-grandchildren I’m not doing!”
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In 1998, just six years after People named him the “Sexiest Man Alive,” Pierce Brosnan became a grandfather for the first time at 44. His first wife, Cassandra Harris—who was 12 years Brosnan’s senior and died in 1991—had two children from a previous marriage. After their father’s passing, Brosnan adopted her son, Christopher, and daughter Charlotte, who gave birth to Brosnan’s first grandchild, Isabelle Sophie. When asked about being both an international object of affection and non denture-wearing gramps at the same time, Brosnan told Grand magazine, “If I can get away with it, why not?... To make movies and to be a grandfather and a sex symbol in the same sentence is a joy.” Brosnan became a father again in 2001, making his granddaughter, Isabelle, three years older than her own uncle. Despite being unconventional, Brosnan is thankful for his clan. “My family has always been a great stability that allows me to go off and dream,” he told The Observer.
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Priscilla Presley was a mere 14 when she first met the King, who was 10 years her senior. At 22, she married Elvis Presley at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas and exactly nine months later, the couple welcomed their only daughter, Lisa Marie, in Graceland. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Lisa Marie married her musician boyfriend Danny Keough at the age of 20, and gave birth in 1989 to Danielle Riley, when Priscilla was a mere 44. In 2004, Presley appeared on the cover of Vogue with her daughter and granddaughter-turned-model, Riley Keough. Priscilla told Larry King on CNN, “I don’t feel like a grandmother.” And she won’t accept the term either. Instead, she opts for “Nona,” which means grandmother in Italian. “There's just such a connotation with grandma, and I just liked it better,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
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James Brolin met his first wife, Jane Cameron Agee, during one of his earliest roles—a three-episode stint on Batman in the 1960s. The couple soon had a son, No Country for Old Men star Josh Brolin. When Josh turned 20, he married fellow actress Alice Adair in 1988 and the two had their first child, a son named Trevor, that same year. At just 47, Brolin joined the ranks of Hollywood’s youngest grandparents and fittingly so—his hair had just started to transition to its now-signature white shade. Nine years and one more grandchild later in 1997, Brolin made People’s annual “ Sexiest Man Alive” issue by earning a spot as one of “Hollywood’s Best Boyfriends.”
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Wynonna Judd received plenty of negative press in 1994 when she had her first son, Elijah, at 30, out of wedlock. Grandma Naomi was only 48. A year and a half later, Naomi became a grandmother for the second time when Wynonna had daughter, Grace Pauline. Naomi, the single mother who struggled to raise her two daughters—the other is actress, Ashley—in Kentucky was excited to have a second chance at child-rearing through grandmotherhood. "Being a grandmother is completely different because I trained the girls alone; and now that I have time, I can experience curiosity, playfulness and all the things that were in short supply when I was a mother,” she told Grand magazine.
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The seventh and most famous Osmond son, Donny, became a grandfather at just 47 when the second of his five sons announced his wife was pregnant in 2005. “I’m going to be one of the youngest grandpas around,” the singing sensation told Hello! magazine. “I can hardly wait.” The Osmond family continued in its testosterone dominance with Donny’s first grandchild, Dylan James, and he made sure he was there to see Dylan enter the world. After performing a show, Osmond hopped on the next plane and made it to the hospital one hour before his first grandson arrived. “I don't know if I can put it into words what it means to be a grandfather, but the easiest way I can say it is I don’t feel the responsibility of the teaching process, just the loving process,” he told said in an interview.
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Joe Jackson, the father of Jackson 5, had another Jackson 5 and then some by the time he was 50. The second generation of the famed musical family began when Jackson was just 42, when his oldest child, Rebbie, gave birth to Stacee Brown in 1971. As the first Jackson grandchild, Brown had her own go at fame and fortune, singing on her uncles’ 1989 album, 2300 Jackson Street. Though her career did not quite take off in the way her family history would indicate, the nine Jackson children continued to give their father Joe the opportunity to create yet another singing sensation. He now has 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom, London Blue, was born to Brown in 2005, a day before his 76th birthday. When Michael passed away, The New Yorker mockingly deemed Joe “ Grandfather of the Year” in 2009. Perhaps the King of Pop’s offspring are his next ticket. “ I keep watching Paris. She … wants to do something,” he told Good Morning America. “And as far as I can see, well, they say Blanket, he can really dance.”
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As they continue to change the title of their ever-growing reality-television family, 19 Kids and Counting, stars Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar could actually now call their TLC show, 19 Kids and One Grandkid and Counting. The Arkansas-based family of J’s—Joshua, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace, and Josie—broke form in 2009 when eldest son Josh and his wife Anna welcomed their daughter and picked a new letter, M for Mackynzie Renée. “I can’t believe I’m old enough to be a grandfather,” Jim Bob Duggar told People. “All these kids are keeping us young.” With the birth of their 19th child, Josie, just two months after their first grandchild was born, it seems they’ll stay “young” for some time to come.
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