Raymond Albert Romano was born on December 21st of 1957 in Queens, New York. He grew up in an Italian-American family alongside two brothers. His family life later proved to be an inspiration for many of his skits and standup comedy routines. He also based Everybody Loves Raymond on his real-life family experiences, both as a child and as father/husband. Romano graduated from high school in 1975, and he was in the same class as comedian Fran Drescher. After high school, Ray Romano studied accounting at Queens College in New York.
Ray Romano is best known for his role on the hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Outside of his work on this show, Ray Romano has appeared in a wide range of TV and film roles. Outside of acting, Ray Romano is a talented poker player who was competed professionally in tournaments. He is also a amateur golfer.
Ray’s salary per episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” for the first four seasons isn’t known but starting in season five he earned $800,000 per episode. That works out to roughly $19 million per season, in seasons 5, 6 and 7. That’s $57 million from these three seasons alone. If you assume he made just $300,000 for the first four seasons, that would be an additional $30 million.
For the final two seasons of his show, Ray earned what was then a record-breaking $1.75 million per episode. That was enough to make him the highest paid television actor in history up to that point. His record was broken in 2019 when both Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon earned $2 million a piece per episode of The Morning Show. However, when you adjust for inflation, Ray’s $1.75 million is the same as around $2.3 million per episode today. Through this lens, Ray Romano is the highest-paid actor in television history as of this writing.
Using the $1.75 million number, Ray earned $40 million off season 8 of his show. He earned $28 million on the shorter final season the following year. And keep in mind, these amounts are base acting and production salaries alone. Ray owns part of the backend points on the show which has already allowed him to earn tens of millions from syndication deals to date. He will continue to earn millions from syndication for years to come.
Outside of acting, Ray Romano is a poker enthusiast who has competed in the World Series of Poker numerous times. He is also an avid golfer, and in 2012 he finished fifth in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am alongside Steve Bowditch.
Romano met his wife while working at a bank, and they got married in 1987. They have four children together. In 2012, Romano announced that his wife had successfully recovered from breast cancer.
