All About Robyn Crawford, Whitney Houston's Best Friend and Former Love Interest

No one was closer to Whitney Houston than Robyn Crawford.

Since the music icon exploded on the scene with the release of her self-titled debut album in 1985, Crawford was by Houston's side as a close collaborator, professional gatekeeper — and above all, her best friend.

Throughout the two decades that followed, Crawford's relationship with the singer was in the limelight. Some people questioned their closeness as being more than that of a friendship, but Houston regularly tamped down romance rumors in interviews.

Since the singer's death in 2012, the rumors persisted, and were mentioned in the 2017 documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me as well as 2018's doc Whitney — but Crawford herself did not address speculation and avoided involvement in the productions.

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It wasn't until she published A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston, her 2019 memoir, that she chronicled her relationship with the superstar from her own perspective — and confirmed that the two had been romantic at one point.

Now, their love affair is being recounted in Kasi Lemmons' biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, starring Naomi Ackie as Houston and Nafessa Williams as Crawford. "I really approached this carefully and I want [her] to know that I just wanted to represent her in the best light," Williams, who has not met Crawford, told GLAAD.

From friends before fame to their relationship throughout stardom, here's everything to know about Houston's confidante Crawford.

She was friends with Whitney long before fame

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While the world was introduced to Houston when she released her debut album in 1985, Crawford was introduced to the singer in 1980 at a New Jersey summer camp where they were both counselors. (Crawford was 19 and Houston was almost 17 when they met.)

"I was 16 and we were working at summer jobs and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is really going to be a trip this summer — I don't have any friends'," Whitney recalled in an interview that surfaced in the documentary Whitney.

The singer continued: "And then here comes Robyn with this beautiful, beautiful afro. She was tall and very statuesque and I was like, 'Wow, man.' She stood up for me. I remember thinking, I've known this person seems like all my life."

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Her physical relationship with Whitney ended when the singer signed a record deal

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Crawford opened up in her 2019 memoir about her physical and emotional relationship with Houston, explaining that their intimacy was more than skin deep. "You could tell Whitney and I were tight," Crawford wrote in A Song for You. "It wasn't all about our sleeping together."

She continued: "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."

But despite wanting "to be together," Houston ended the physical part of their relationship early on, soon after she signed a record deal with Clive Davis at Arista. The singer broke the news by giving Crawford a gift of a slate blue Bible one day in 1982.

"She said we shouldn't be physical anymore," wrote Crawford, "because it would make our journey even more difficult ... She said if people find out about us, they would use this against us. And back in the '80s, that's how it felt."

RELATED: Whitney Houston's Best Friend Robyn Crawford Breaks Her Silence on Their Love Affair in New Memoir

Her bond with Whitney wasn't encouraged by the singer's family

Courtesy of The Estate of Whitney E. Houston

The 2019 Whitney documentary delved into the strained dynamic between Houston's family and Crawford, suggesting that there was animosity towards Crawford that might have been based in homophobia, jealousy, or both.

"Robyn was a nobody, she was an opportunist," Houston's eldest brother Gary declared in the film, who also responded to allegations that his family tried to scare Crawford away from spending time with Houston: "I've never seen them do anything but I know that she was something that I didn't want my sister to be involved with."

Furthermore, Crawford shared in her memoir that Houston's mother, gospel singer Cissy Houston, put pressure on their romance. "Whitney told me her mother said it wasn't natural for two women to be that close," she wrote, "but we were that close."

Despite family members' feelings towards Crawford, others on Houston's team supported it — like longtime agent, Nicole David, who viewed her as an asset. "As an agent I would go to Robyn and Robyn would help with meetings," David said of Crawford, who also served as the singer's creative director for years.

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Her romantic relationship with Whitney waned as the singer's fame grew

Following Houston's decision to take a step back physically from Crawford, their romantic relationship transitioned into a friendship. "By the time Whitney was becoming a star in the mid-'80s, it had already become a really close friendship," Whitney director Kevin Macdonald said.

As the singer's creative director, assistant and confidante, Crawford's relationship with Houston was also a professional one. Although Crawford wrote in her memoir that they "vowed to stand by each other," she quit her role in 2000 when she realized she could no longer protect Houston amid her spiraling drug addiction and volatile marriage to Bobby Brown.

Despite exiting as Houston's right hand, Crawford stood true to their vow, which was in part the reason why she wrote the memoir. "I wanted to lift her legacy, give her respect and share the story of who she was before the fame, and in that, to embrace our friendship," she wrote.

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She was Whitney Houston's maid of honor

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Houston tied the knot with Bobby Brown in 1992 and Crawford was her maid of honor. But the married couple's relationship was strained and often made headlines in tabloids. Crawford worked for the singer in the eight years that followed, but was pushed further and further away as tension between her and Brown flared.

"I saw and heard him speak to her in ways that were demeaning, and [he] talked down to her," wrote Crawford — claiming her friend became further isolated and her drug use escalated. "They didn't talk for years," Whitney's ex-sister-in-law Donna Houston shared in the 2019 Whitney doc.

She's married and has kids of her own

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Today, Crawford resides in New Jersey and is married to wife Lisa Hintelmann, with whom she shares two children. She's a New York Times best-selling author, notable for her tell-all memoir, A Song for You. Since it was published, Crawford has spoken on talk shows and in interviews about her 20-year relationship with Houston, something she was never able to do while Houston was alive.