All About Bo Welch, Catherine O’Hara’s Husband

Catherine O’Hara and Bo Welch first met in the ’80s while filming Beetlejuice, a surrealist cult classic that changed both of their professional and personal lives. O’Hara starred as Delia Deetz, while Welch served as the film’s production designer. Since then, the couple has built a decades-long partnership shaped by their shared careers in Hollywood and the two sons they’ve raised together.

While O’Hara is known for playing many iconic film and television characters like Home Alone’s Kate McCallister and Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose, Welch has made a name for himself behind the scenes as an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated production designer. He has also worked as a director.

Here, everything to know about Welch.

Before he was designing the world of Beetlejuice, Welch studied architecture at the University of Arizona. After earning a degree, passing his exams, and moving to Los Angeles, Welch realized that traditional career path wasn’t right for him.

“Even though I loved the education, and I loved architecture—I still do—I hated the job,” Welch said in a January 2024 video interview with Kingdom of Dreams. After learning that his skill set might translate to set design, he walked into the Universal Studios art department in 1977 and was “hired on the spot.”

By the mid-1980s, Welch had worked his way up the ranks as a set designer before landing his first major production design credit on The Lost Boys. That job, he said, indirectly led to his next project—and to meeting O’Hara.

Welch was hired as the production designer on Beetlejuice in 1987. He and O’Hara met on the project, and toward the end of filming, he asked her on a date.

In a 2019 interview with The New Yorker, O’Hara explained, “We went on location at the end of the movie, and we started dating. I moved to L.A. to be with him.”

“Yeah, I moved for love,” the Canadian actress added.

According to People, Welch asked O’Hara out during a shoot day in Vermont. O’Hara told the outlet that they talked “all the time” while first filming in Los Angeles. “I thought, ‘He’s going to ask me out. Oh, he’s going to ask me.’ And stupid me, I should have asked him out, but I didn’t.”

Thankfully, director Tim Burton got involved. Welch told Uproxx in a 2015 interview, “Tim [Burton] told me, ‘You should ask Catherine out.’ It didn’t even occur to me that I was even supposed to talk to actors. But since Tim told me to, I did and then we dated and we’re married and here we are today.”

O’Hara noticed him from the start of the project. “My first day, I got to meet with Tim and then Glen [Shadix]...he took me to every department to meet everyone, and he introduced me to Bo first and everyone in the art department,” O’Hara said during an April 2020 video interview with TIFF Originals. “And then on the set, we talked and laughed, and I was really falling for him, but he never asked me out.”

Welch added: “I remember being in my office when I heard Glen’s voice and then I saw this beautiful woman just flash by the door, and I went, ‘What the heck was that? That must be Catherine O’Hara.’”

Bo Welch and Catherine O’Hara on June 19, 1989

O’Hara and Welch got married on April 25, 1992. Their first son, Matthew, was born in 1994, followed by their second, Luke, in 1997. Although the family maintains a relatively private life, O’Hara has shared glimpses of their parenting journey over the years.

“They’re very funny, and we encourage it,” O’Hara said of her sons in a 2007 interview with the Toronto Star. “The older one does Warner’s cartoon bits, really old-fashioned, cheap-ass funny vaudeville stuff. And the little one does word play.”

The brothers now work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. O’Hara told Vanity Fair in 2020 that her sons worked on Schitt’s Creek, with one in set construction and the other serving as a set dresser. During a 2024 appearance on Watch What Happens Live, O’Hara also revealed that one of her sons is currently working as a set dresser on The Last of Us.

Welch has worked as a production designer on some of the most visually inventive films in Hollywood, including Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Men in Black, The Birdcage, A Little Princess, Thor, and The Color Purple. He has received four Oscar nominations for his work.

“If you have to wake up in the morning to do something, I can’t think of anything better [than production design],” he told Below the Line.

In 2003, he also directed his first film, The Cat in the Hat, and went on to direct five episodes of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

In 2021, O’Hara won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy for her role in Schitt’s Creek. With the ceremony taking place virtually due to COVID-19, O’Hara accepted her award at home with Welch seated next to her.

During her speech, Welch began playing an applause sound on his phone, followed by ceremony-style outro music as a cheeky nod to awards show protocol. “Seriously?” O’Hara said, laughing.

Though O’Hara and Welch rarely speak publicly about their marriage, when they do, it’s with mutual affection and candid honesty. “We’ve been through some dangerous times in our marriage, and thank God we both just really wanted to work on it and stay married,” O’Hara told People in 2024. “You can’t do anything if only one person wants to work on it. But thank God we both wanted to.”

She added that humor remains a cornerstone of their relationship. “And laughing. Respecting each other and talking, but laughing comes from that too,” she said.

In August 2024, O’Hara and Welch returned to the world of Beetlejuice for the film’s highly anticipated sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Although Welch was not involved in the production, he accompanied O’Hara to the Venice Film Festival premiere. O’Hara had reprised her role as Delia Deetz in the project.