Robyn Crawford is pulling back the curtain on her romantic relationship with her close friend, the late Whitney Houston. In her new memoir, A Song For You: My Life With Whitney Houston, Robyn, 58, discusses the pair’s friendship as teens that quickly turned physically romantic in the ’80s. She also opens up about her tumultuous relationship with Whitney’s ex-husband, Bobby Brown. Robyn also talks about how she felt obligated to speak up and defend her friendship with the late icon. Here’s five fast facts about Robyn on the day of her book release. She will also appear on The Wendy Williams Show on November 12 at 10 a.m. ET.
1. Robyn Crawford is a former actress from New Jersey. — After being Whitney’s confidante for decades, Robyn went on to create a life in New Jersey. She is currently a fitness trainer.
2. She met Whitney in her teens. — The two met at a community development center in the summertime, where they became best friends. Whitney was just shy of 17 and Robyn was 19. Not long after, they shared their first kiss. “You could tell Whitney and I were tight,” Robyn writes. “It wasn’t all about our sleeping together. We could be naked. We could be bare and didn’t have to hide. We could trust each other with our secrets, our feelings, and who we were. We were friends. We were lovers. We were everything to each other. We weren’t falling in love. We just were. We had each other. We were one: That’s how it felt.” As for their sexuality, Robyn writes that “we never talked labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives, and I hoped it could go on that way forever.”
3. Robyn went on to work within Whitney’s camp. — As Whitney’s fame began to take off over the course of two decades, it was Robyn who was by her side through it all. “We wanted to be together,” writes Robyn in her book. “and that meant just us.” However, Robyn said on an episode of Dateline, November 9, that Whitney ended the physical part of their relationship soon after she signed a record deal with Clive Davis at Arista.
4. She wrote the book for Whitney. — Robyn hopes by revealing the details of her life with the music legend that she can set the record straight about the woman Whitney truly was.
5. Robyn is married. — She has since moved on with her partner, talent agency executive, Lisa Hintelmann, who she shares two adopted twins, a boy and a girl. The family resides in New Jersey.