Conan O’Brien Says His Career ‘Never Would Have Happened If It Weren’t For Dave’

As everyone nervously sits and waits for David Letterman‘s final appearance on the Late Show over at CBS, others have been paying their respects to the legendary late night talk show host. Jimmy Fallon reminisced about growing up with Letterman’s Late Night program, Seth Meyers recreated Letterman’s original Late Night opening sequence, and Jimmy Kimmel tearfully said goodbye to the man whose show helped him get his own over at ABC.

But perhaps the most sincere (and, for me, the most highly anticipated) comments came from Conan O’Brien on tonight’s episode of Conan. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what Coco has to say about the only other person who experienced what he did re: NBC and The Tonight Show?

All snark aside, O’Brien puts it bluntly when he describes Letterman’s 1994 appearance on the show:

After that night — that one night, that one appearance — everything turned around for me. The morale of the staff shot through the ceiling. My producer, my writers, Andy — we all thought that if David Letterman can come on our show and say a few kind words, maybe, just maybe we can earn the right to be here. And we survived.

No, that’s not my still-broken garbage disposal leaking all over the keyboard. I need to find a tissue or twelve.

(Via Team Coco)

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