Elaine Lui

Lui attended the Toronto French School and graduated from Lawrence Park Collegiate in Toronto; she recalls her teenage years as happy and has remained close to her parents.⁠[1]

She is a 1996 Bachelor of Arts graduate of Western University, in history and French.⁠[2]

In 2000, Lui moved to Vancouver, where she worked in fundraising at the University of British Columbia; in 2002 she left that job and returned to Toronto to care for her mother, who needed a kidney transplant. She later went back to Vancouver and worked as a development officer at Covenant House, which helps at-risk teens.⁠[1]

In 2003, Lui began sending a gossip email to a small group of friends and colleagues, the beginning of LaineyGossip.⁠[3]

In 2006, Lui joined CTV’s entertainment news programme etalk, where she later became senior correspondent.⁠[4]

During the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics she covered entertainment and gossip news, appearing daily on Canada’s official Olympic morning show; she also went to London to cover the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.⁠[5]

CTV announced the daytime talk series The Social for fall 2013, with Lui as one of its four co-hosts; she relocated from Vancouver to Toronto for the show.⁠[6]

Produced by Bell Media In-House Productions, The Social premiered on CTV on September 2, 2013, airing weekdays at 1 p.m., co-hosted by Lui with Melissa Grelo, Cynthia Loyst and Traci Melchor; each episode opens with a round-table chat on topical subjects.⁠[7]

In 2014, Random House Canada published Lui’s memoir Listen to the Squawking Chicken, which describes how her mother raised her drawing on Chinese fortune-telling, feng shui and ghost stories.⁠[8]

The US edition was published by Amy Einhorn/Putnam on April 22, 2014, with 288 pages and the subtitle “When Mother Knows Best, What’s a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of)”.⁠[9]

On January 20, 2015, CBC named Lui one of the celebrity panellists for Canada Reads 2015, defending Raziel Reid’s young adult novel When Everything Feels like the Movies.⁠[10]

When the competition ended on March 19, Kim Thúy’s Ru won, and the book Lui defended, the first young adult title in the competition’s history, finished second.⁠[11]

In 2016, Lui was named to WXN’s “Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women”.⁠[5]

By 2017, Lui was recording the podcast Show Your Work every week, released on iTunes and Google PlayGoogle PlayGoogle Play is a digital content distribution service operated by Google, centered on the Google Play Store, the app store for Android devices. Its predecessor, Android Market, launched in October 2008 alongside the first Android phone, and in March 2012 it merged with Google Music and the Google eBookstore and was renamed Google Play. As the main distribution channel for Android apps, its commissions, billing rules, and review practices have drawn controversy, including the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit in the United States and penalties under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.Open the full entry.⁠[12]

In 2018, she taught a fourth-year Faculty of Arts course on the power of gossip at Western University.⁠[13]

In 2019, she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Host in a Web Program or Series for etalk at the Oscars.⁠[13]

Bell Media Studios announced a series for the streaming service Crave, titled for now the Untitled Elaine “Lainey” Lui series, in which Lui and guests discuss buzz-worthy Crave programming.⁠[14]

As of 2019, Lui had written national columns for The Globe and Mail and Metro and was a consultant for Covenant House; she lived in Toronto with her husband.⁠[5]

On December 12, 2019, CTV announced that Lui would co-anchor etalk with Ben Mulroney while Danielle Graham was on maternity leave.⁠[4]

In a 2020 interview, Lui recalled meeting Jacek Szenowicz, a supervisor in a class she was teaching in Vancouver as a corporate trainer; she moved to Vancouver months later, and they married there. She said Szenowicz is the director of LaineyGossip and that they are business partners and life partners.⁠[15]

Lui announced she was leaving The Social to focus full time on her gossip blog and etalk; on August 14, 2023, she announced on the show that Andrea Bain would become a full-time co-host.⁠[16]

As of 2026, Lui remained etalk’s senior correspondent, after co-hosting ten seasons of The Social; she is also a celebrity ambassador for Special Olympics Canada and appeared as a speaker at the 2026 Banff World Media Festival.⁠[13]

LaineyGossip: Official website: https://www.laineygossip.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

Bell Media: Official website: https://www.bellmedia.ca/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/LaineyGossip (opens in a new window)⁠[7]