Before Jimmy Fallon ever became a late-night host or a household name, his parents made quite the unforgettable impression on the family of his future wife, producer Nancy Juvonen. Fallon has told the story with his signature mix of awe and embarrassment: the night his parents almost burned down Nancy’s family’s summer house in New Hampshire.

It all started with a lake. Fallon explained that his dad, Jim, loved swimming and one day jumped right into the water. Like any dad, he didn’t think about what he had in his pockets until it was too late. “My dad gets out of the lake and realizes he’s got a pocket full of wet money,” Fallon recalled in an interview on The Tonight Show. Naturally, he tried to fix it in the most dad-way possible: he stuffed the soggy cash straight into the microwave at the Juvonen summer house to dry it out.

That’s when things went south. Smoke began billowing through the kitchen, filling the house with the smell of singed bills. “He’s basically setting twenty-dollar bills on fire in the microwave, and the whole house just starts filling up with smoke,” Fallon said, shaking his head as he retold the moment.

Jimmy Fallon and his father-in-law.

While the smoke fiasco unfolded, Fallon’s mom Gloria was dealing with her own mishap. She had gotten something in her eye and began rubbing it frantically. The result? According to Fallon, she looked like “a pirate or a jack-o’-lantern.” Imagine the first meeting with your future in-laws — and your mom looks like she’s in costume for Halloween while your dad is setting cash ablaze in their kitchen.

Fallon laughed as he remembered the chaos: “There’s smoke, there’s burnt money, my mom’s half-blind looking like a pirate. And this is how they meet my wife’s family.”

Despite the disastrous introduction, the Juvonens weren’t scared off. Fallon and Nancy eventually tied the knot in 2007, proving that even a smoky kitchen and a slightly singed microwave couldn’t stop true love. Today, Fallon tells the story with a smile, clearly proud of how his parents’ mishaps turned into one of his family’s funniest legends.

It’s the kind of story that could only happen to Fallon — chaotic, hilarious, and somehow still heartwarming. “If anything, it broke the ice,” he joked. “Because after that, how could I possibly top it? My parents had already done all the damage.”