Loni Love Keeps It Real in Her New Book

The memoir traces her trajectory from Detroit projects to multi-hyphenate comedian

Nadja Sayej
ZORA

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A photo of Loni Love attending an event in February 2020.
ALoni Love attends The Women’s Cancer Research Fund’s Unforgettable Evening 2020 on February 27, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: Tibrina Hobson/WireImage/Getty Images

Loni Love, the Emmy-award-winning co-host of The Real, has come a long way from her humble beginnings.

She was kicked out of her mother’s home in a Detroit housing project and lived in her car while working on an assembly line at General Motors. It wasn’t until college that she started dabbling in comedy, and though she took an engineering job in California, she moonlit as a standup comedian, eventually becoming a regular at the Laugh Factory in L.A. and then a finalist on Star Search in 2003. “I took some time to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she recalls. “At my job, my manager had a massive heart attack. It made me realize that nothing is certain, nothing is for sure, and if I’m going to make a move, I gotta make a move now.”

After working as a road comic for years, gigging across the country, she has been a co-host of The Real, speaking her own truth, with valuable insight, advice, and support, since 2014. She also co-hosts a podcast, Café Mocha, with rapper YoYo, which she calls the only nationally syndicated show of its kind that was created exclusively by and for women of color. It can be found on over 40 stations, including SiriusXM.

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