So far this season on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, new Friend of the Housewives LaToya Ali is known for two things: Saying Drew Sidora’s wig looks like a “pet,” and having a somewhat flirty relationship with Kenya Moore. While we don’t see any of her home life on RHOA, there is an easy way to find out more — everything is on LaToya’s YouTube.
Drew might have dissed LaToya by asking in her confessional if being a YouTuber is a real job, but it’s been LaToya’s career for years now. She launched her LaToya Forever channel on the platform in 2009, spun it off into a second channel all about her family, wrote a book called LaToya's Life: Uncut Mishaps of a YouTube Star, and has even started a children’s clothing line. Her main channel has a whopping 1.45 million subscribers.
LaToya comes across purely like a pot-stirrer on RHOA, and it’s hard to get a read on her outside of that. (She really loves bringing up that pet wig thing.) But, check out her YouTube channel, and a whole new world is opened up — including the fact that she’d like to be a full-time Housewife. Take a look.
She’s talked about RHOA in her videos.
LaToya announced that she would be joining the cast of RHOA in a video posted on Nov. 6, 2020, a month before season 13 premiered.
The 33-year-old didn’t want to give too much away, but said, “One of the girls has a crush on me. Like, for real. This show is crazy.” Obviously, she’s talking about Kenya and the unexplained, sort of flirty, nude-photo-sending thing going on between them.
LaToya continued, “Oh my god, they’re going to put me on The Shade Room, aren’t they? They already did put my ass on The Shade Room. What did I sign up for?”
In an earlier video, posted on September 19, LaToya talked about attending Cynthia Bailey and Mike Hill’s engagement party, but didn’t mention any names. Instead, she just said she was going to a party where she had to wear a white gown and that fans would get to see it eventually.
Then, in a video from Jan. 16, LaToya referenced her “pet” diss, saying of her own wig, “It doesn’t look like a pet on my head.” In this video, she also said that the reason she looks particularly “crazy” on the show is because as a Friend Of we don’t get to see her full life, just her interactions with the full-time cast members. “Hopefully that changes soon!” she added.
She’s very open about her family life.
LaToya was married to Adam Ali for six years, from 2014 to 2020. The Canadian influencer announced their split last year and talked about the situation in a video titled “Separation”. She explained that she initially filed for divorce in 2019, before dropping the filing. Then, the next year, she and her husband decided to end things.
LaToya and Adam had worked on YouTube together, including on their family vlog channel. “I just don’t feel that love connection, that genuine love, in my marriage,” LaToya says in the video. “It’s more of a partnership rather than a marriage.”
LaToya and Adam share three young children — Samia, Zayn, and Ayah — and they’re all featured heavily on her channel. Six-year-old Samia even has her own channel called Samia’s Life.
In addition to her kids, LaToya also shows her parents, her grandparents, and aunts and uncles back in Canada. In one video, an uncle jokes of her time on Real Housewives, “The less we see of you [on the show], the better we are.”
Her oldest videos are gone.
LaToya has been on YouTube since 2009, so there's no doubt that she’s made a lot of videos over the years. But, if you scroll back to the beginning of her channel, it doesn’t take all that long. That’s because at some point LaToya seems to have deleted a good amount of her videos. The first one listed right now is from 2014, and it shows her revealing her relationship with Adam.
You can get a small look at some of her oldest videos, though, in one she posted in 2016 titled “Reacting to My Old Videos”. In this video, you see that she used to make comedy videos, including one about “the top ten twerks you can do around the house” (ex. “the vacuum twerk”). There was also one where she did the very dangerous cinnamon challenge.
While her videos throughout the years have included other challenges, Q&As, and beauty content, right now she is focusing on vlogging. LaToya previously had a separate family vlog channel. That channel, which has been retitled Sam and the Fam after her daughter Samia, has 865K subscribers. After her divorce, LaToya started things anew on her own channel, beginning her vlog count back at number one.
She interviewed Kandi.
In 2019, LaToya interviewed her RHOA co-star Kandi Burruss for her channel. They talked about Kandi’s businesses, her family, and how she became a reality TV star.
Kandi ended up being the one to introduce LaToya during the second episode of season 13. “I met LaToya a few years ago,” Kandi said. “She can be a lot to take.” Very quickly, LaToya hit it off with Kenya, and she soon scored the only invite to join Kenya on a private plane to the cast’s beach vacation in South Carolina.
If LaToya does end up becoming a full-time Housewife eventually, it’s clear that she’s not only willing to start drama, she's very willing to share her entire life. She’s used to it after 12 years.
Image: Bravo