“Why Everybody Still Loves Raymond – And Always Will”

It’s been two decades since fans were first introduced to Ray Barone (Ray Romano) and his dysfunctional family.

The hit CBS live-studio sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond premiered on Sept. 13, 1996. It starred the comedian as an Italian sports columnist living in Long Island with his wife (Patricia Heaton) and their three kids, with his nosy parents just across the street.

After winning 15 Emmy Awards — including two for Outstanding Comedy Series and several for acting — the show aired its final episode 20 years ago on May 16, 2005.

Although fans have missed the Barones’ weekly antics, Everybody Loves Raymond lives on with all 210 episodes available to stream on Peacock and Paramount+ — a binge undertaken by Romano in April 2024, who watched and rated all the episodes for the first time since the series finale in 2005.

“I got on a little kick there. I hadn’t seen the episodes,” the actor told PEOPLE. “They took on a new look to me. I was appreciating them more. I was very hard on them back then … But you see when you’re removed from it a little, I felt like an audience member. And then I said, ‘Let me rate them.’ I rated them, and I was hard on some.”

Whether you’re a newbie to the series or a longtime fan, here’s what the Everybody Loves Raymond cast is up to now.

Romano — in the role of sportswriter Raymond Barone — kept the laughs coming through interactions with his overbearing parents and put-upon wife, Debra (Heaton). The role earned him one Emmy and a handful of nominations, however, he’s admitted that not every episode was award-worthy.

“When you do 210 episodes, you’re going to have episodes that you think are brilliant and you’re going to have episodes that you think, ‘Wow, you know what? We kind of missed it on that one,’ ” Romano told PEOPLE of his Everybody Loves Raymond rewatch.

He continued, “Then you’re going to have episodes that are very good, great, and somewhere in the middle, you know what I mean? That’s just to be expected when you’re cranking an episode out every week.”

Following Romano’s run on the hit show, the Queens-born actor remained a fixture on TV, appearing on Men of a Certain Age, Parenthood, Vinyl, Get Shorty, Made for Love and Bupkis. He also starred alongside Lisa Kudrow, Linda Cardellini, Luke Wilson and more on the 2025 Netflix comedy series No Good Deed.

Romano voiced Manny in the Ice Age film series and appeared in The Big Sick and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Before his appearance in Greg Berlanti’s 2024 film Fly Me to the Moon, he wrote, directed and starred in 2022’s Somewhere in Queens, opposite Laurie Metcalf.

He shares four children — Alexandra, Matthew, Gregory and Joseph — with wife Anna Romano.

Monica Horan joined the cast slightly later as Robbie’s girlfriend (and later, wife) Amy MacDougall. Like sister-in-law Debra, Amy couldn’t win with her future in-laws, sparking a bond between the two over the sheer absurdity of the Barones.

Following the show’s end in 2005, she appeared on Enlightened, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Middle and Better Things.

Horan is married to Raymond creator Philip Rosenthal; together, they have two kids.