Jill Whelan (born September 29, 1966)[1] is an American actress. After working in television commercials, she landed her breakthrough role playing Vicki Stubing, the daughter of Captain Stubing, in six of the nine seasons of the American television series The Love Boat (1977-1986). She later guest starred on the revival Love Boat: The Next Wave. She has had numerous guest roles in TV shows and played Lisa Davis in Airplane! In 2015, she was hired as a celebrations ambassador by Princess Cruises.
Early life
Jill Whelan was born in Oakland, California. After auditioning and appearing in a local production of The King and I at the age of 8, she sent her school picture to a San Francisco Talent Agency and landed a series of TV commercials.[2]
An M&M commercial[3] got her noticed by producers, and she was cast in Friends (1979), which was quickly cancelled.[4] Concurrently, at the age of 11, she was cast as Vicki, daughter of The Love Boat's Captain Stubing. She initially appeared on the show as a guest star, and later became a series regular.
In the mid-1980s, in Los Angeles, having returned from England and with The Love Boat coming to an end, Whelan moved to New York City and worked as an event producer at Madison Square Garden,[7] where she helped set up acts.
In 1999, Whelan left acting, started working as an investigative producer at the Los Angeles television station KCOP, and continued as a radio show host for 1210 WPHT radio.
On September 10, 2008, Whelan appeared with several other cast members from the movie Airplane! in a reunion segment on NBC's Today Show. In October 2008, she made her New York City cabaret debut with her one-woman show Jill Whelan: An Evening in Dry Dock at the Metropolitan Room.[8] From September to November 2011, Whelan appeared in the British farce Move Over Mrs. Markham at Stage West Theatre Restaurant in the Toronto, Ontario area.
Whelan was set to replace Mark Thompson, who retired on August 17, 2012, after 25 years co-hosting The Mark & Brian Show on KLOS in Los Angeles, but during Thompson's final broadcast, co-host Brian Phelps announced that he, too, was quitting KLOS.
In 2013, Whelan became co-host with Brian Phelps of The Brian and Jill Show. The two share a love for improvisational comedy, and have created hundreds of characters together that they have performed on stage during improvisation shows and in sketches on their podcast.[9]
Whelan is mentioned in "Dead Man Sliding", the tenth episode of the third season of Sliders, as an actress who never had relevance in the dimension of the protagonists.
Whelan met her first husband, Brad St. John, as an associate producer for UPN News in Los Angeles, shortly after leaving Madison Square Garden. They married in December 1993. Soon after their wedding, she became pregnant with their first son, Harrison. Whelan divorced St. John in 2001.[11]
Returning to the East Coast, she married her second husband, Michael Chaykowsky, in April 2004.[12] Her second son, Grant, was born in 2006. In 2014, Whelan filed for divorce from Chaykowsky.[13]
In 2015, Whelan was hired by Princess Cruises as a celebrations ambassador.[14]
^Leszczak, Robert (2012). Single Season Sitcoms, 1948–1979: A Complete Guide. Jefferson, North Carolina: Mc Farland & Co Inc. p. 52. ISBN978-0-7864-6812-6.
^Jennifer Wulff (June 11, 2001). "Beyond the Sea". People 55/2001. Retrieved May 31, 2021. At the same time she is going through a painful divorce from businessman Brad St. John—the father of her son Harrison, 6, and the man she blames for the loss of her Love Boat savings.
^L. Redwood, Tina (April 19, 2004). "Archive – Passages". PEOPLE.com. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
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