Ray Romano reflects on 35 years with wife Anna, talks new film ‘Somewhere in Queens’

After 35 years of marriage, Ray Romano says nobody supports him like his wife Anna Romano.

“Today when I left very early, I went over and kissed my wife. I thought she was asleep and as I’m walking out the door all I hear is, ‘Don’t say anything stupid,'” he joked to Good Morning America.

The couple, who married in 1987, now have four children together — and Ray credits his wife for seeing something in him before he was famous.

“We met as bank tellers here in Queens,” he reminisced. “I was living at home — I lived at home until I was 29. I was not a catch, you know? I give her credit ’cause she married me before any of this happened.”

He recalled, “I would ride my bike to work. I don’t know what she saw in me.”

Ray Romano also told GMA it was his six-foot-five, former high school basketball player son Joseph Romano who inspired him to write, direct and star in his directorial debut Somewhere in Queens — in theaters this Friday.

“I knew I wanted it to be about my hometown of Queens and the people I grew up with,” he said.

“When it was ending, we knew he wasn’t going to continue to play — it got very emotional for me….I’m being honest, I loved being the father of the star basketball player,” Romano recalled.

“The idea was, what if this was about a guy who that’s all he had?” he continued, turning back to the film. “He felt very small and very insignificant and he lived vicariously through his son and it was ending. That was the starting point of this story.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.