He’s hosted “Survivor” for more than a decade.
Now Jeff Probst is facing a new challenge: fatherhood, helping to raise the children of Mark-Paul Gosselaar – you know him as Zack Morris from “Saved by the Bell.”
Probst married Gosselar’s ex-wife, Lisa Ann Russell, in 2011. Russell and Gosselaar had been married for 14 years, and the couple had two children together.
Probst discussed his marriage – and new parental responsibilities – on “Larry King Now,” which appears on Hulu.
“I always thought I would have this family and this great family unit, because that’s what I came from,” Probst, 51, told Larry King. “And then one day I met this woman, and it happened.”
King asked Probst if he gets along with Gosselaar, who now stars on TNT’s “Franklin & Bash.”
“Yes,” Probst said. “They were together almost 20 years, so they had this long marriage and they raised these two young kids. And they raised them with the kind of love that the kids, they see me, and he’s now remarried, his wife (Catriona McGinn), they just see us as two more parents.”
Probst said he considers himself a father, not just a step-father – and that the children call him dad.
“Y’know when it locked in? When we were together before we got married, they were playing with it,” Probst said. “Sometimes it would be dad, sometimes it would be Jeff, Dad Two, sometimes it’d be D-2.”
But when Probst and Russell married, the children spoke – and Probst became “dad,” right alongside the guy who played Zack Morris on “Saved by the Bell.”