When Rosenthal and Horan first met one another, they were both struggling in the entertainment industry. But it was their meeting and eventual marriage that would lead Rosenthal to create Everybody Loves Raymond, which changed both of their professional lives for the better.
“We ran into each other, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I’m a big fan of yours. Hello!'” Horan explained. “And I actually said to him, ‘I’m a big fan of yours, too,’ but I had not really seen him in anything. I was just taken off-guard.”
As a result of this meeting, the two would go on to join a comedy troop together and fall in love. Horan would convert to Judaism and it was much of what happened in their personal lives that made it to the small screen in the form of Ray and Debra’s relationship.
“Monica and I once had a fight over a can opener,” Rosenthal said. “I spilled the tuna everywhere and got mad, and things were said.” Those things included, “Why am I making tuna fish when I just got home from work?”
This conversation did make it into Everbody Loves Raymond. When Horan read the scene, she stated, “My favorite line to Phil is, ‘You can say the right thing on TV, but why can’t you do it in real life?’ This is because in the scene, Ray apologized to Debra, something that Rosenthal did not do immediately after the situation happened in real life.
While the combination of Rosenthal’s writing and using the couple’s personal life to be creative could have caused issues between the two, Rosenthal and Horan working on the hit comedy together proved to be beneficial to their marriage from the time that Horan joined the show until the final episode.
