A Television Gig Introduced Fox Business’s Dagen McDowell to Her Husband

Regular Fox Business viewers know Dagen McDowell, since the 53-year-old is a regular presence on Mornings With Maria. But viewers might also recognize McDowell’s husband, Jonas Max Ferris, an investor adviser who has also appeared on the cable network.

Ferris said in a 2011 appearance on Imus in the Morning that he met McDowell almost 10 years prior when they were enlisted to debate mutual funds on the Fox News show Cashin’ In. “She’s not on the show anymore — she’s on a different show — so I figure I won the show, ultimately,” Ferris said at the time.

According to her Fox Business bio, McDowell is a Wake Forest University alum who started her career as a financial journalist for an Institutional Investor newsletter. She later penned the “Dear Dagen” column for TheStreet.com and covered financial topics for SmartMoney and that magazine’s website, SmartMoney.com.

McDowell joined Fox News as a business correspondent in 2003 before hosting the show Bulls & Bears and making regular appearances on Your World with Neil Cavuto. The Virginia native moved over to Fox Business in 2007, but she continues to make appearances on the Fox News shows Outnumbered and Cavuto Live.

Ferris, born in Southfield, Mass., in 1971, is an investor adviser with a net worth of $5 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He has appeared on the Fox Business shows Your World with Neil Cavuto and Bulls & Bears. He’s also the co-founder of the website MaxFunds.com, having launched the website with former University of Georgia classmate Jason Burr, according to the Los Angeles Times.

At the time they met, McDowell was married, while Ferris was single. “That’s takeaway #1,” Ferris said on Imus in the Morning in 2011. “I was not married ever. Dagen was. That’s usually an indication of who’s right and wrong in arguments.”

But McDowell crashed that interview to defend herself — and to tease Ferris about some of his quirks in their domestic life, like his using a clothesline to dry his laundry.

But Ferris called McDowell out, too, teasing her about her reaction to his job shoveling gravel at their home. “She comes out in her pink robe and the chihuahua in her arms. And this is where, I would say, the fantasy of marrying someone from the South briefly crosses your vision. You expect to get a mint julep in the shade,” he said. “Instead, what I get is not a simple ‘[That’s] a nice job moving half a ton of rock.’ I get … ‘When are you going to strip the paint off the copper gutters?’”