Conan O'Brien: See Rare Throwback Pic Of The Late-Night Talk Show Host Before Fame

Conan O'Brien hosted the Oscars two times in a row in 2025 and 2026. Before that, he built a podcast and media empire that he sold to SiriusXM for a whopping $150 million, and even before that, he spent three decades as one of America's favorite late-night hosts. That's the Conan O'Brien everybody knows, whether from his long television stint or anything in between. If you go back long enough, though, you get a version of O'Brien that was a lanky, impossibly red-headed college kid at Harvard leading their humor magazine with a lot of charm. The photo below is from that era, taken in 1984 by the late John Candy while O'Brien was giving him a tour of Harvard University.

John Candy took this picture of Conan O'Brien while Conan was his tour Guide at Harvard University in 1984.

Cool historical photos: https://t.co/Pgcn2bknZu pic.twitter.com/ycaT9QrJ7l

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) May 29, 2026

O'Brien was never some accidental class clown who stumbled into comedy. The man was the valedictorian of his high school class before he set foot in Cambridge. He entered Harvard in 1981 and majored in history and literature; his thesis was titled "Literary Progeria in the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor." It's not exactly the educational background you'd expect from a man who would build a career on scatological late-night bits and self-deprecating humor, but the work of John Candy certainly served as inspiration in his early years.

During an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show," O'Brien talked about how "Saturday Night Live" may have been the big thing back in the day, but things changed when he and his brothers happened upon "SCTV" and caught Candy on the show. "It was so funny, and it was the first time, as much as I liked 'SNL,' I thought, 'They're making this for me.' And John Candy was one of my favorite performers on that show." He then went on to describe the surreal thrill of meeting Candy and showing him around Harvard, which led to the aforementioned photograph.

In his sophomore and junior years, Conan O'Brien spent two consecutive terms as president of the Harvard Lampoon, the university's storied humor magazine. His future NBC boss, Jeff Zucker, was coincidentally doing something similar, running the rival Harvard Crimson across the campus. O'Brien also briefly pursued music, playing drums in a band called the Bad Clams.

O'Brien graduated with high honors in 1985 and quickly work on the writing staff of HBO's "Not Necessarily the News." The real break came in 1988, though, when he joined "Saturday Night Live" as a writer. He earned another noteworthy credit right before he began his talk-show journey, writing the highly acclaimed Season 4 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "Marge vs. the Monorail." Then came the run that made Conan O'Brien who he is, starting with NBC handing him David Letterman's "Late Night" chair in 1993.

O'Brien originally struggled in the ratings, but he and the team managed to keep the show afloat until he found his footing, and he ended up hosting it for 16 years before wrapping in 2009. He followed that with an infamous, short run on "The Tonight Show" that lasted only seven months due to Jay Leno's interference, and he earned the nickname Coco in the process.

From "The Tonight Show," O'Brien went to TBS for "Conan" and ran that show until its sign-off in 2021. The reason O'Brien ended his TBS show wasn't burnout or a wish to retire, though, and he's never left the spotlight. He's appeared on the podcast "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" since 2018 and has earned accolades for his HBO travel show, "Conan O'Brien Must Go." O'Brien's 2025 Oscars turn drew the show's highest figures in five years, so it's safe to say that Harvard kid from the old photograph isn't done yet.