Special Ops: Lioness star Jill Wagner: Meet husband David Lemanowicz and their two daughters
Jill Wagner’s off-screen love story has a leading man to rival any Hallmark script — but who is he, and how did their romance take shape?
On Special Ops: Lioness, Jill Wagner isn’t just suiting up as Bobby, the quick-response team leader — she helped dream up the series years ago and brought the concept to Taylor Sheridan. She also serves as an executive producer on the Paramount+ drama, a role she backs up with serious fitness work that shows on screen.
Husband with a wild résumé
Wagner is married to David Lemanowicz, whose career path could be its own action movie. A former pro hockey goalie, he was drafted by the Florida Panthers in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft and played across multiple leagues before switching gears completely.
That second act took him into the military, where he rose to U.S. Army Major, earned a degree in Global Security and deployed to Afghanistan. He later funneled that real-world experience into Special Ops: Lioness, working with Wagner and Sheridan behind the scenes to shape the show’s tactical edge.
The family now lives on a 200-acre farm in Tellico Plains, Tennessee.
A long road back to each other
Their love story has its own twists. Wagner first dated Lemanowicz when she was 17. Life pulled them apart for 17 years until a reunion during a USO tour in Afghanistan put them back in touch. A later chance run-in in Los Angeles turned that rekindling into the real thing.
Family life
Off set, Wagner is all about family — and their daughters’ names come with stories of their own.
- Army Gray Lemanowicz — born April 2020, with a name nodding to the couple’s military ties (and a Fourth of July conception tale the family laughs about).
- Daisy Roberta Lemanowicz — born August 2021.
- Lija Lemanowicz — Wagner is also stepmom to David’s daughter.
The family swapped Los Angeles for open skies, settling on a sprawling farm in Tellico Plains, Tennessee. Their restored 1912 home anchors a quieter chapter built around kids, chores and a lot fewer traffic jams than Hollywood.