Everybody Loves Raymond Star Ray Romano Hated Sitcom’s Title

The One Thing Ray Romano Hated About ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’

CBS/Everett Collection

Everybody loved Everybody Loves Raymond, but not everybody loved that title. In fact, star Ray Romano begged CBS to rename the sitcom, according to writer and executive producer Tom Caltabiano.

“Ray was tortured by the name,” Caltabiano told The New York Post recently. “Because Ray in real life is a modest guy, and he’s like, ‘Everybody loves Ray — what if the show stinks? Every journalist is going to be like, oh, really, everyone loves Ray?’ … Thank God it was a hit. He had to make it a hit just to overcome that title!”

As Caltabiano explained, Romano’s real-life cop brother would lament that he risks his life every day, but “everybody loves Raymond.” For the Everybody Loves Raymond pilot, creator Phil Rosenthal gave that line to the onscreen Ray’s brother, Robert (Brad Garrett). And Monica Horan — Rosenthal’s wife, who played Amy, Robert’s love interest — thought that snippet of dialogue “would be a great title for the show.”

“And then Ray was like, ‘Oh, no. Are you kidding me?’ So, he called [David] Letterman [who executive produced the show through his Worldwide Pants company], and he called the president of CBS and said, ‘Please, can we change the show name?’ So the president said, ‘Look, if it’s a hit, we’ll change it.’ And then it became a hit and the president says, ‘Well, we can’t change it now!’”

Now Raymond fans can see props, costumes and around 300 photos from the making of the show — most of which Caltabiano snapped — at New York City’s Paley Museum, which is hosting an exhibit called “30 Years of Everybody Loves Raymond: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute” through Sept. 7.

One of the items on display is Romano’s handwritten list of potential titles for the sitcom. Some of his ideas: Related to Ray, Guy Named Raymond, That Raymond Guy and even Um, Raymond.