Everyone loves a good magic trick and even if you’re not a fan of magic, you would most likely love Raymond Joseph Teller popularly known as Teller. He is a famous magician, writer, actor, painter, film director, and illusionist who has featured on so many projects in his 4-decade long career that it is hard for us to keep score. He is also known as the hotter and quieter half of the magic duo Penn & Teller which was started more than 40 years ago with his friend Penn Jillette.
Teller is so quiet that silence has become his trademark and the media has a field day whenever he speaks at a show or interview. This strategy, Teller explained, was adopted because he realized he made the audience pay more attention to him instead of pelting him with garbage when he first started performing at fraternity parties. There is so much to know about Teller, his professional life and his rumored gay relationship with his partner and friend, Penn. To find out all these details and more, keep reading.
Raymond Joseph Teller’s Biography
Raymond Joseph Teller was born on Valentine’s Day, the 14th of February, 1948 in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As an adult, he changed his name legally to the mononym Teller. The guess is that he did this to make it easier to be identified in the entertainment world. He was born to two parents although we do not have any information on whether he had siblings or not. His father’s name is Israel Max Teller and he is part Jewish and part Russian. Israel Max was born in the Brooklyn area of New York City and is a painter. His mother’s name is Irene B, she comes from Delaware and is also a painter. It appears Teller’s parents had quite an interesting love story as they met while they were both attending an art school called Samuel. S. Fleisher Art Memorial. Teller holds an American Nationality and he is openly an atheist and skeptic.
For his high school education, he attended Central High School and he graduated from there in 1965. A short while after graduating from high school, he bagged a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from Amherst College. He then found employment as a Latin teacher in a high school. Raymond Joseph Teller taught Greek and Latin language in a high school called Lawrence High School located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He was enlisted as a member of the Hall of Fame of Central High School in 2001 and that was a remarkable achievement.
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Teller’s career as a performer began somewhere in the 1970s when he started performing with his friend named Weir Chrisemer. Both of them performed under The Othmar Schoeck Society for the Preservation of Weird and Disgusting Music. That’s a hilarious name and we are guessing that was the point! Things took a turn around for Teller when in 1974, he met Penn Jillette and all three of them began performing together under the name Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. They performed in many cities including Minnesota and even San Francisco. The three-man group eventually shrunk to two and Teller and Penn began performing exclusively in 1981. We do not know why Weir dropped out of the group but there was reportedly no bad blood between the friends.
What is Their Partnership Like?
Penn and Teller started performing in different shows and different countries all over the world and soon enough, they became a crowd favorite. In 2013, the comedic duo was honored with a star on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. This star was in the live performance category and is interestingly placed right next to the star that is dedicated to Harry Houdini who is one of the greatest magicians ever.
Teller’s silence is one of the most prominent things about his performances. However, the world has heard his voice a few times. For example, he was the voice of Mofo the Psychic Gorilla in one of their earliest Broadway show. He also spoke in the final scene of the movie Penn & Teller Get Killed. The two friends have had a very fruitful and successful partnership as they’ve been working together for quite a while.
Is Raymond Joseph Teller Married to Penn? Are They Gay?
The duo has been making comedy and performing together for more than 40 years now and you can already guess what the world is thinking. Giving their closeness, fans have repeatedly wondered if the two comedians are gay and are secretly married to each other. The fact of the matter is that they are neither gay nor in a relationship. While Teller is single with no kids, Penn is happily married to a woman known simply as Emily and has 2 kids.
