So, just who is Melissa McKnight, and how did she first meet Matt LeBlanc? Two years LeBlanc's senior, model McKnight was born in the U.K. in 1965, though moved across the Atlantic to the U.S. at a young age, and was first introduced to her ex-husband in 1997 through her friend, actor Lou Diamond Phillips' then wife, Kelly. Per BiographyPedia, she's worked with agencies like New York City's Elite Models, and appeared in a number of magazines, as well as on both the big and small screen, while her marriage to LeBlanc was not her first. She was previously married to filmmaker Anthony Esposito, and the couple had two children together.
Of course, a year later she met LeBlanc, but it doesn't appear that they were together for six straight years before their 2003 wedding. Sheila Kennedy, who played the role of a stripper in Friends in 1998 — after LeBlanc met McKnight — described the "Friends" actor as "hitting on me at the wrap party" and claimed that the two slept together, before she received a call from him explaining that he'd gotten back with his girlfriend. Judging by the dates, this girlfriend was almost certainly McKnight (via news.com.au).
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