On this day in comedy on July 12, 1971 Comedienne, Actress, Loni Love was born in Detroit, Michigan.
Love got into stand-up comedy during her college days. She won a $50 competition and then had to wrestle with the decision to pursue her dream of being an electrical engineer; a goal she’d labored towards since working the assembly line putting doors on the 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass; the reason she was at Prairie View A&M. Her well thought out plan consisted of her getting her degree and diving face first into a career that would offer her a lifetime of job security and substantial benefits or she could give all that up and become a comic who’d probably be broke for the first half a decade and have to sleep on other comic’s couches and on floors or worse – hook up with some guy who’s no good to make the journey take even longer. Hey, she won a $50 competition. What was so hard to decide?
Loni Love compromised. She got a job at Xerox as an engineer and at night worked the club circuit; becoming a regular at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory. On her eighth year at Xerox, Love quit do to comedy fulltime. In 2003 she won the jury prize for best stand-up at the US Comedy Arts Festival. She got work on VH1 as a talking head on their series “I Love the 2000s” and other decades. She came in as runner-up on Star Search. The competition was so tight, judge Naomi Judd said loudly and emphatically that “Loni should’ve won” once the winner, John Roy’s name was announced. In 2009, Variety magazine and Comedy Central named Love one of the top 10 Comics to watch” and she ended up as a sidekick to Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately.
Loni Love has performed on The Tonight Show with Jay leno and joked it up on Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed. She has appeared in the films, With or Without You, Soul Plane, Bad Asses, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Bad Asses on the Bayou, Gunshot Straight and Mother’s Day. Her television guest roles have included Girlfriends, Cuts, Phineas and Ferb, Chocolate News, Whitney and American Dad. She had recurring parts on Kickin’ It and Ned’s Declassified Survival Guide, was a series regular on Thick and Thin and hosted Premium Blend.
In 2008 Love covered the inaugural of Barack Obama for CNN. She dropped her first comedy special, America’s Sister on Comedy Central in 2010 and her first book, Love Him or Leave Him But Don’t Get Stuck With The Tab in 2013.
Loni Love’s been a co-host on the daytime talkfest, The Real since 2013.
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
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