As for the slight fudging of the 30th anniversary date — Everybody Loves Raymond premiered in September 1996, Rosenthal isn’t worried about it. “I have two answers for that,” he said. “One is they wanted it now, so who cares? The other is, Ray and I met 30 years ago, and I wrote the pilot 30 years ago. So in essence the show was born 30 years ago.”