Liz Phair Husband Jim Staskauskas: Marriage, Divorce, and the Story Behind It
If you’re looking up Liz Phair’s husband, you’re probably trying to pin down a simple fact—was she married, and to whom? The clear answer is that Liz Phair was married to film editor Jim Staskauskas. They later divorced, and she’s largely kept that part of her life private ever since. Still, the basics are known, and the context is worth understanding because it explains why her relationship status gets misreported so often online.
Quick Facts About Liz Phair’s Husband
- Former husband: Jim Staskauskas (film editor)
- Marriage: March 11, 1995
- Divorce: 2001
- Child: One son, James Nicholas Staskauskas (often called “Nick”)
Who Was Liz Phair’s Husband?
Liz Phair’s husband was Jim Staskauskas, a film editor. While Phair is famously public in her songwriting—sometimes brutally honest, sometimes sharply funny—her personal life outside the music has generally been handled with a lot more restraint. That’s one reason you’ll see small inconsistencies across random celebrity sites: the quieter the public record, the more room the internet has to guess.
What’s consistent across credible biographies is that she married Staskauskas in the mid-1990s, they had a son together, and the marriage ended in divorce in 2001. After that, she did not continue to present herself publicly as married, and there’s no widely confirmed, reliable public record of a later spouse.
When Did Liz Phair Marry Jim Staskauskas?
Liz Phair married Jim Staskauskas on March 11, 1995. That date matters because it places the marriage right in the era when her life was shifting rapidly: she was no longer just a cult-favorite indie voice; she was becoming a widely discussed cultural figure. When your career is accelerating and you’re being scrutinized for what you represent—not just what you sing—your private life can start to feel like part of the job. And that pressure doesn’t always improve a marriage.
It’s also a time period when Phair’s public identity was heavily “interpreted” by others. She wasn’t simply releasing music; she was being labeled, debated, praised, dismissed, and argued over. Building a stable family life inside that kind of noise is hard for anyone, and it’s even harder when you’re also navigating the music industry’s expectations of women.
Did Liz Phair and Jim Staskauskas Have Children?
Yes. Liz Phair and Jim Staskauskas had one child, a son named James Nicholas Staskauskas, born in December 1996. In interviews and older press references, he’s often called “Nick.”
This is one of the most important parts of the story, because it explains a lot about how Phair’s priorities have shifted over time. When you become a parent, your concept of privacy changes. It’s not just about protecting yourself; it’s about protecting a child who didn’t choose public attention.
That protective instinct is why you’ll notice a pattern with Liz Phair: she’ll speak candidly about emotion, identity, and power, but she does not typically turn her family into content. Her son exists in the story of her life, but not as a character for strangers to consume.
When Did Liz Phair Divorce?
Liz Phair and Jim Staskauskas divorced in 2001. You’ll sometimes see other years floating around online because many sites repeat each other without checking anything. But the most consistently documented timeline places the divorce in 2001.
After the divorce, Phair’s life and career continued to evolve in visible ways—new sounds, new public narratives, new phases of reinvention. But the relationship itself did not become an ongoing public talking point, and that silence tends to invite misinformation. When you don’t constantly restate “I’m divorced,” the internet eventually fills the gap with whatever it wants to believe.
Why This Relationship Gets Misreported Online
If you’ve seen conflicting spellings or contradictory dates, you’re not crazy. A lot of celebrity databases and fan sites are built like a telephone game: one site posts a detail, another copies it, and suddenly the copied version looks “confirmed” because it appears in ten places.
With Liz Phair, the most common points of confusion are:
Different spellings of Staskauskas. You’ll see variations that swap letters around. The correct form most commonly used in reputable bios is Staskauskas.
Divorce year confusion. Some casual sites claim 2000; others claim 2001. The divorce is most reliably cited as 2001.
Assumptions about her current marital status. Because she keeps her private life private, some pages label her “married” without any credible confirmation. The safest, most accurate framing is: she was married to Jim Staskauskas and later divorced.
What This Chapter Meant for Liz Phair’s Life and Work
People sometimes search “Liz Phair husband” as if it’s just trivia, but with her, personal history and artistic output are always in conversation. That doesn’t mean every lyric is a diary entry. It means her writing has always been willing to stare directly at the messy parts of relationships: desire, disappointment, power imbalances, and the way people bargain with themselves to stay in something that isn’t working.
Marriage and motherhood can also change how an artist experiences time. Touring isn’t just exhausting; it’s absence. Recording isn’t just creative; it’s a schedule that pushes family life to the edges. If you’ve ever tried to juggle a demanding job with parenting, you already understand the underlying tension. Now add public attention, creative pressure, and the expectation that you keep reinventing yourself.
In that light, it makes sense that Phair’s life after the 1990s looks like a series of intentional recalibrations—artistically and personally. The marriage is part of her timeline, but it isn’t presented as her defining identity. That’s very Liz Phair: she won’t let any single label swallow the rest of her story.
Is Liz Phair Currently Married?
As of what’s reliably and publicly documented, Liz Phair is not known to be currently married. She was previously married to Jim Staskauskas, and they divorced in 2001.
Because she has kept her personal life relatively private, it’s smart to treat any “currently married” claims you see online with skepticism unless they come from a direct, reputable source or her own confirmed statement. In general, if a claim about a public figure’s spouse appears only on celebrity listicles and copycat biography pages, it’s not the kind of information you should build confidence in.
Why People Care About Liz Phair’s Husband in the First Place
When someone’s art feels personal, people naturally want a personal map. They want to connect the dots: this album came out here, this relationship happened here, this reinvention happened after that. It’s human. You’re trying to understand how a life turns into music.
But Liz Phair has always complicated that impulse. She’s never been interested in being “decoded” in a neat, satisfying way. Even when she’s direct, she’s still in control of the frame. That’s why the question of her husband has such a short, clean answer—and such a limited public story attached to it.
So if you came for the simple truth, here it is: Liz Phair’s former husband is Jim Staskauskas. They married in 1995, had one son, and divorced in 2001. Everything beyond that is best treated as private life—because she has clearly preferred it that way.