THE OTHER WAY Jen’s friend Randi Newton was a stripper on the NY Post front page! Plus LOTS more!
On the current season of 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way, Jen Boecher’s friend Randi Newton is upset because Jen’s fiancé, Rishi, sent her a topless photo in her DMs. However, it seems a bit strange for Randi to be upset about a topless photo given the fact that she used to work as a stripper! And she even appeared on the front page of the New York Post as part of a story on former Wall Street workers turning to stripping to pay the bills!
Jen was one of three women interviewed for an article titled “Axed Wall St. Women Take To Stripping,” which appeared on the front of an April, 2009 issue of the publication. (The online version of the article had the more playful title: “Axed Gals Take Pole Positions.”)
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The economy’s gone bust, and so have they.
Scores of professional New York women stripped of their six-figure jobs are now working as “gentlemen’s club entertainers” at upscale Manhattan jiggle joints. Former Wall Streeters, fashion executives and real-estate agents are pole dancing and stripping for as much as $1,500 a night — but also because they like the flexible hours.
Randi Newton used to work at Morgan Stanley before the crash but is now an “independent contractor,” pole dancing at Rick’s Cabaret in Murray Hill three or four nights a week. She says she makes “$160,000 a year on tips alone.”
She said: “I went with friends to a strip club and the manager offered me a job as a dancer. I thought it was different. And fun.”
Soon after the article was published, several websites did a little digging and easily debunked some of The Post‘s “facts” about Randi. However, all of her various bios spread out over multiple websites do include the claim that she worked at Rick’s Cabaret in New York City after working at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
Here’s Randi Newton’s bio from her “Wall Street Stripper” WordPress blog prior to the article coming out:
Randi Newton attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha on a scholarship she received from the Miss America Organization. Newton moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. She had a wide variety of jobs, first working as a live in Au Pair, then moving up to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter as an analyst assistant for a year. Not satisfied with her situation, she left and was hired as a manager for one of Manhattan’s most prominent marketing liquor companies. After being laid off and unable to find another job despite a year long search, Randi wandered into a strip club with a friend, and walked out with a waitress job. One year later, after being dumped by her boyfriend, she got drunk and took off her clothes on Valentines day, there the excitement began.
Newton has since been offered several management positions with major companies, and was approached again by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. However, using the business skills she developed working in a corporate environment, and applying them to her “night job” her income exceeded $100,000.00 a year. Recently Randi was featured in Radar Magazine in an article about “smart” strippers. She was also approached by the Oprah Winfrey show about the inside life of a stripper. She currently lives in New York City, studying at The New School and Upright Citizens Brigade. She is also a columnist for Exotic Dancer Magazine. Randi loves dealing poker, singing karaoke and has “retired” her g-string. Her book, “Wall Street Stripper” is hitting bookstores December 09.
And here’s Randi’s updated bio soon after The New York Post article:
Randi Newton is currently the sex and relationship columnist for The Observer, her column The Dating Divorce is critically acclaimed and well known. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, LAWeekly, Mic.com, Jezebel, Gawker, and TheFix. She attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha, on a scholarship provided from the Miss America Organization, and has more recently studied at The New School in New York City, The Groundlings in Los Angeles, and Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City. She resides between New York and Los Angeles.
Other interesting things?
Moving to Manhattan from Omaha, Nebraska in 1998 to pursue an acting career. Newton started by working as a live-in nanny, to trading up for a position at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Eventually tiring of her 9-5 life, she left Morgan Stanley and wandered into a gentlemen’s club where a year long waitressing position, turned into a stripping stint that parlayed into opening surprising media appearances and writing opportunities.
Featured as the cover story, April 2009, of the Sunday New York Post about women stripping in times of an economic crisis, Newton has also appeared internationally to speak about the recession and the gentlemen’s club industry. In addition she has been featured in Radar Magazine, Penthouse Magazine (fully dressed) and such television programs such as; Inside Edition, The Insider, The TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, Entertainment Tonight. She’s also appeared as a panelist multiple times on FOX News The Strategy Room, and appeared on The Gayle King Show/Oprah Radio, and went face to face with Bill O’Reilly on the controversial “The O’Reilly Factor”.
Newton has also appeared in such television programs such as various appearances on “Howard TV On Demand”, “The Sopranos”, “Nip/Tuck” and Numb3rs.
Randi currently works in the addiction and recovery field as a recovery specialist, in New York, and nationwide.
She’s currently working on her second manuscript.
Randi mentioned in her older bio that she planned to publish the book Wall Street Stripper in December of 2009. It doesn’t appear that book was ever published. However, Randi did publish the book Your Place or Mine: A Seduction Guide for the Woman of Today in 2014.
For those of you wondering if perhaps Randi was just a plant on the show, and not actually a close friend of Jen’s, you need not worry. Randi and Jen have photos dating back more than a decade on social media. On one of their Instagram photos together posted in 2016, Randi stated in the caption that their friendship was established in 1996.
Jen and Randi are BFFs, but Randi has other notable friends as well — including Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox! Laverne was even the “best woman” at Randi’s wedding in 2013! Oh, and the “man of honor” for the ceremony? Multiple Tony Award nominated actor Andrew Rannells!
Oh you know just catching a ride with @Lavernecox #emmysobserved pic.twitter.com/zOCfwfcard
— randinewton (@WorldOfRandi) August 25, 2014
It doesn’t appear as though Randi’s marriage worked out. (They made it at least two years because she made an anniversary post in 2015.) I’d be interested to know what Jen thinks of Randi’s ex-husband. 😉
Randi has lived a very interesting life, which now includes a recurring role on 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way. (Then maybe Happily Ever After and/or Pillow Talk?) I will let Randi herself fill you in on 25 more things you might not know about her (or maybe you do) from a 2009 Wall Street Stripper blog post:
1.Two musicians have written songs about me to my knowledge. One was an amazing song called “Randi” by Jeremy Kushnier that people have speculated on the fact on whether or not it was really written about me…but the lyrics are pretty telling for many reasons. The second was Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit freestyle rapping to me at the Sound Factory before it became a condo. The third is questionable and by someone I’d rather not mention (of course I know the musician quite well) but because it’d be wishful thinking if he wrote one about me at all, and I’d like to pretend that he did write it with me in mind.
2.I used to be a backup singer in a metal band.
3.I used to be a stripper and made a crap ton of money.
4.I worked at a funeral home/mortuary in college as a pre-need secretary. (pre-need: buy before you die) I never saw a dead body, but once there was a cheap casket in the xerox/fax room which doubled as an embalming room. Once my boss yelled at me for telling him I needed to be home in time to watch 90210.
5. No male other than my parents or family or platonic friends have ever sent/given me flowers.
6. I’ve only been to Hawaii once and I loved it. I went with my friend Terry and we had brunch with Barry Williams, (Greg Brady from the Brady Bunch). It was a very Brady brunch.
7. I worked out of my college dorm as a phone sex operator.
8. At the same time I worked at Planet Hollywood.
9. I made out with Gene Simmons from KISS at Tao in New York City in the middle of the restaurant. Five years later I’m in Los Angeles working a convention and he walks up to me and tells me he remembers me from the restaurant.
10. I’ve been to the Playboy mansion twice.
11. I had a brief fling with my celebrity crush. I regret it. It broke my heart and I was never the same afterwards.
12. I used to work at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I was so heavy at the time I was often mistaken for Monica Lewinsky.
13. I write a monthly column for this magazine [exoticdancer.com] to educate strippers on finance.
14. I’m getting a book published in December 09.
15. I had cornrows once.
16. I didn’t really start drinking alcohol until I turned 25. I’ve made up for lost time!
17. As a joke I auditioned for “Flava of Love” (this is when I had cornrows. This is the only show that I’ve ever come close to getting. Needless to say I turned it down.
18. My roommate is considerably older than me. I thought she was dead a few weeks ago, but she’s not.
19. I sleepwalk if I have just a little too much vodka and usually wake up in the hallway of my apartment building.
20. I have never tried a drug other than marajuana and I don’t even really count that.
21. I once sat next to Ron Jeremy and Denis Hoff from the Bunnyranch in Las Vegas, and regret not taking a pic with them.
— randinewton (@WorldOfRandi) August 29, 2012
22. I was a poker dealer in Los Angeles.
23. I’m scared of the dark and sleep with a light on, unless someone is sleeping next to me.
24. When I met my best friend he was 10 and I was 13.
25. I used to love karaoke, now I’m not so into it.
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
