Ray Romano Implies Heart Surgery For Major Blockage Recently Saved His Life
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Ray Romano appeared on Monday’s episode of the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast to wax nostalgic about his and Maron’s early days in stand-up comedy. When the subject turned to health, however, the 65-year-old actor implied he nearly died of a heart attack this month.
“I just had to have a stent put in,” Romano told Maron. “I got kinda lucky that we found it. I had 90% blockage... in the main artery, what they call the ‘widowmaker,’ I had a stent put in.”
Starting at about the 30-minute mark in the podcast, the “Everybody Loves Raymond” star told Maron that while he doesn’t consider himself old, he’s now “getting a couple of notices” from his body that suggest otherwise. Romano said he was on cholesterol-lowering statins to combat his unhealthy lifestyle of yore.
“I had high cholesterol 20 years ago and my guy always told me, ‘Why don’t we start going on the statins?’” he told Maron. “And every time, I said, ‘Let me do it myself, let me do it myself.’ And I would go home and I would eat right ― not vegan, but I would eat a little healthier, and get it down a couple ticks.”
“I go back,” Romano continued. “It was 280 ― now it’s 220, and I go, ‘Ah!’ And he’d go, ‘OK, but now you gotta get it down even more.’ But then I’d go home and think I was hot shit and I got it down already, and I would start cheating, cheating. And that was the cycle... for 15, 16 years.”
Actor Ray Romano said that chest pains earlier this month led to a visit to his doctor — and, ultimately, heart surgery.
Maron empathized, as he’s on a prescription himself and has chronicled his battle against potential diabetes on his podcast for years now. Romano told Maron that his own “cholesterol dropped” once he was “on the meds,” but then there came another twist.
“Here’s the kicker,” Romano said. “So I’m on the meds and it’s got me all down now, so I figure now I can enjoy and eat some food — my sugar level’s up now! I’m the same thing, I’m in the pre-diabetic side.”
Romano said it’s been “hard for me to sustain that diet,” and that his doctor had suggested his high cholesterol didn’t mean he was “in danger.” While filming his directorial debut “Somewhere in Queens” earlier this month, however, Romano started having chest pains.
“I called my agent at 1 in the morning because I couldn’t sleep,” he told “Entertainment Tonight” at the time. “I go, ‘I can’t do it, can’t do this.’ Because — I’m not joking — I had to go to my cardiologist in New York and get on the treadmill and do a stress test because I was getting chest pains.”
Romano’s “Everybody Loves Raymond” co-star Peter Boyle reportedly had a heart attack on the show’s set in 1999. Seven years later, Boyle died of multiple myeloma and heart disease at the age of 71.
“If I could go back 20 years ago,” Romano told Maron, “I woulda went on the meds.”
