In 1955, she was married to James Sanger. However, after being married he expressed his desire not to have any children. The couple's marriage got dissolved after six years of their marital relationship and the reason for their divorce was James Sanger's wish of not having any children.
After spending the single life for about a decade, she got married to Edgar Rosenberg on 15th of July 1965. The couple welcomed their one and only child in 1968 and they named her Melissa Rivers. She was married to him for more than two decades and on 14th of August, 1987, he committed suicide. Later in 2012, she claimed that she had a number of extramarital affairs including a one-night affair with the late "The Night of the Hunter" (1995) actor, Robert Mitchum in the year 1960 and with the late actor Gabriel Dell when she was in a marital relationship with Rosenberg.
Joan began her career in the late 1950s, and during that time she appeared in minor roles in several short-run plays. She played her first movie role in 1965 and that was in "Hootenanny a Go-Go a.k.a. Once Upon a Coffee House". Some of her notable movie roles were in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Iron Man 3, The Intern, Shrek 2, The Smurfs, Look Who's Talking, and many more. She was also an author and she had published several books and articles in her life namely "Live", "From Mother to Daughter: Thoughts and Adivce on life, Love, and Marriage", "Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything and I Mean".
In her book Bouncing Back, which was published in 1997, Joan Rivers has described how she had developed bulimia nervosa, an eating disorder, after the death of Rosenberg, and also the demise of her psychologist of AIDS.
Joan Rivers used to charge a whopping amount for her roles and for her role in The Late Show, she earned the salary of $5,000,000 /year. Before her death, her net worth was rumored to be around $150 million.