Raven Symone is an actress, singer, and songwriter who first gained fame as a child star playing Olivia Kendall on The Cosby Show from 1989 to 1992. She is popularly known for starring in the well-known Disney series, That’s So Raven and its 2017 spin-off Raven’s Home.
She was born on 10 December 1985 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Lydia (Gaulden) and Christopher Pearman, as Raven-Symone Christina Pearman-Maday. She has a younger brother, Blaze. She is currently 35 years old.
Since an infant age, Raven has been in the entertainment industry and still well to star in some entertainment projects to date. And recently, she made the headlines with her weight loss. Learn more about her here!
Raven Symone Credits Her Partner, Miranda Maday, For The Inspiration For Weight Loss
Raven Symone lost some weight because she wants to be with her wife Miranda Maday “in the best health possible” for a long time.
In an interview with E! News, Raven revealed that her wife Miranda inspired her to lose 30 pounds. “This was because we want to have a life together,” said Symone. “[Miranda] doesn’t want to take me to an early grave and I want to make sure I am there for her in the best health possible.” The actor revealed in the interview that she felt it was time to change her lifestyle after receiving some “horrendous” results on a medical exam.
Raven then opened up about the lifestyle changes, saying, “I do very minimal exercise and I am an avid faster. I make sure I have a minimum of 14-hour fast between dinner and… breakfast.”
However, the actress pointed out that she was not attempting to encourage any of her fans for the same practices as her, noting, “I don’t try to speak for anybody else.”
Raven Symone Married Life With Wife Miranda Maday
The Disney star Raven Symone wed Miranda Maday in an intimate ceremony on 16 June 2020. She shared a wedding picture on her Instagram account as she embraced her newlywed partner in a wedding dress.
Raven Symone with her partner, Miranda Maday (©: Instagram/Raven Symone)
She wrote on the post, “I got married to a woman who understands me from trigger to joy, from breakfast to midnight snack, from stage to home. I love you Mrs. Pearman-Maday! Let’s this world a new asshole!!! I’m married NOW.”
Their wedding was held in famed choreographer and Grey’s Anatomy star Debbie Allen’s garden, officiated by their pal Erica Summers and included a catered meal created by Allen, a longtime friend of Symone’s, which only had six guests.
Raven also shared a snap of her wedding ring, revealing that a showcased ring was bought for $50 at the thrift store due to coronavirus while they tattooed the letter PM on their ring fingers. The real wedding rings arrived 10 weeks their big day.
As for their phase after marriage, the honeymoon, they stayed up at home having fun together as they spend more time bonding with each other doing the wedded-couple things.
Their romance did not make it to the public until they walked down the aisle in June 2020. Symone also did not come out as a lesbian until she took a break from Hollywood to go to college at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to embrace her true self. “I never thought I would come out because my life didn’t matter,” she said in the 2016 It Got Better video. “I was only what was supposed to be sold as the Raven Symone brand. So it was something that I always thought in my head. I’ll have a ‘friend’. I’ll have a husband and I’ll have a ‘friend’ on the side so I can be happy.”
She said she finally came out publicly because she found someone who was much more than a friend. “I don’t care anymore because I fell in love,” she said.
The actress, though married, she still has not parented a child. However, her plays as a fictional mother on TV have such an alluring act that it almost feels like she is a mom in real life. When interviewed during the year 2019 about those plays, she said that it came from her own mother and noted that she “practiced” how she would act as a mother in certain situations. Well, her married life has just reached a year of a milestone, and she may parent a child together with her wife soon as well.
While talking about children, back in May 2021, during her appearance on the show Entertainment Tonight, Raven opened about her future parenting plans, revealing that they hope to have a “big family” someday.
She shared that she “want four kids” enough to make sure that their holiday and gatherings will be full of fun and excitement. She also noted that if their family only had one child, it would not be “enough distraction” and added that “we [Symone and Miranda] share that in common, wanting that really kind of picturesque, family dinner, loud, house, the things we didn’t really grow up with.”
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Prior to her relationship with Miranda, Raven has been rumored to dating actor Jussie Smollett from 2007 to 2011. It was alleged that Raven was pregnant with Smollett’s child, but that turned out to be false. It wasn’t until 2015 that Raven denied having a romantic relationship with Smollett, telling Billboard that they’re just best friends.
In 2012, she was reported to be dating America’s Next Top Model contestant, AzMarie Livingston though they didn’t confirm the rumors. After three years together, Us Weekly exclusively reported that Symone and Livingston had split, with sources alleging that it could have been due to the actress being unfaithful.
During the year 2016, Raven’s co-star from the sitcom, That’s So Raven, Orlando Brown, opened up about his relationship with her. The reveal came during an interview Brown was having with VladTV. After the interviewer asked what he meant by a lyric in one of his songs in which he claimed Symone “isn’t black anymore,” the child star alleged that he and his co-star had somewhat of a fling back in the day. In May 2018, he shared a giant tattoo of Symone’s face, which circulated around Twitter, and claimed that he wanted to marry her.
Net Worth Of Raven Symone
Raven has had a successful professional over the decades and accumulated a large sum of money since a young age. According to CelebrityNetWorth, she has an estimated net worth of $40 million.
At the tender age of just 3, she got herself a role as Olivia in the last three seasons of The Cosby Show. After the show finished its running, Raven turned to sing in 1993, as the youngest person ever, signing with MCA Records. She went back to acting in some TV series and films, including Mr. Cooper, Queen, The Little Rascals, and such.
Raven’s singing career was doing well, and she also went on to land roles in some other films and TV shows, including Doctor Dolittle, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, and such. She then had her career breakthrough from the Disney series That’s So Raven in the early 2000s.
However, the world almost didn’t saw her, as according to Screenrant, Raven originally auditioned for a Disney show known as The Future Is On Me for playing the supporting role of the lead character of the proposed show. While at the audition, Raven made the show’s creators in awe with her acting so much that they ultimately made her as the main cast and renamed the main character, Raven Baxter. Before the production even started, the show’s name also changed to That’s So Raven after Raven Symone herself. After such a crazy turn of events, Raven Baxter was born and soon became one of the Disney Channel’s most beloved characters.
After such a huge hit, Raven saw herself appearing in several TV shows and films, such as Mighty Oak, Bunk’d, Black-ish, The Bold Type, The Masked Singer, Just Roll with It, Animals, See Dad Run, State of Georgia, and much more.
She also became the guest host on The View for about a year between 2015 and 2016. Raven was the center of some controversy which eventually subjected her to a petition that called for her to resign.