Alex Cooper biography 2026: from Boston University soccer to Call Her Daddy, the $60M Spotify and $125M SiriusXM deals, Unwell, and her baby in October 2026.
Last updated: November 3, 2026 · By Nathan Cole
Alexandra Cooper was born on August 21, 1994, in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and at 32 she is the most commercially successful woman in podcasting. That sentence sounds like a press release until the numbers behind it land: a reported $60 million Spotify deal in 2021, a reported $125 million SiriusXM deal in 2024, a media company valued at a reported $500 million in August 2026, and a first baby announced on Instagram on October 20, 2026. She got there from a college soccer field, a New York apartment, and a podcast that started as two roommates talking about dating with no filter at all.
Cooper did not arrive as a polished media executive. She arrived as a former Division I soccer player who had worked in advertising, who recorded a show in 2018 that Barstool Sports picked up, and who survived the public breakup of that show’s founding partnership to rebuild it alone into something bigger. Time called her “arguably the most successful woman in podcasting” in 2021. Rolling Stone called her Gen Z’s Barbara Walters. By 2026 the interview chair had carried her from sex-and-dating talk to a sit-down with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign, a Hulu documentary about her own life, and an acting debut in a Hollywood film. This is that life, with the reported figures labelled and the disagreements left visible.
Quick Facts
| Full Name | Alexandra Cooper |
| Born | August 21, 1994, Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Age in 2026 | 32 (turns 33 on August 21, 2027) |
| Parents | Bryan Cooper (TV sports producer) and Laurie Cooper (psychologist); youngest of three children |
| Education | Boston University, film and television; Division I soccer, 2013–2015 |
| Known For | Creator and host of Call Her Daddy; founder of the Unwell Network |
| Biggest Deals | Spotify, reported $60M (2021); SiriusXM, reported up to $125M (2024) |
| Net Worth 2026 | $60 million–$200 million (estimated range; see the money section for why it is that wide) |
| Spouse | Matt Kaplan, film producer; married April 2024, Riviera Maya, Mexico |
| Children | One son, announced October 20, 2026; name not disclosed |
How This Profile Was Reported
Cooper has never publicly stated her net worth, her salary, or her ownership share of Unwell. Every money figure in this article is therefore a reported or estimated figure with its source named next to it. Where sources disagree — and on her net worth they disagree by more than $100 million — this article publishes the range and explains the disagreement instead of picking a single number and pretending it is settled. Allegations about other people are reported as allegations, with the response or absence of one noted. Where a figure is a calculation rather than a report, it is labelled illustrative.
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Early Life in Newtown: The Youngest of Three
Alexandra Cooper grew up in Newtown, Pennsylvania, a Bucks County suburb of Philadelphia, as the youngest of three children. Her father, Bryan Cooper, worked as a television sports producer — for the Philadelphia Flyers’ broadcasts, in the accounts that name his employer — and her mother, Laurie Cooper, is a psychologist. That pairing, a sports-broadcast household and a psychologist mother, shows up in almost every profile of her, and it is not hard to see why: Cooper’s whole career is a mix of performance instinct and an interviewer’s interest in why people behave the way they do.
She attended St. Andrew’s Catholic School and then The Pennington School in New Jersey. In her Hulu documentary Call Her Alex, released in 2025, she described being bullied as a child — braces, freckles, natural red hair, skinny legs, in her own telling — and the documentary returns to that feeling repeatedly. It matters to the biography because the adult Cooper’s public style, direct to the point of bluntness, reads in part as a reaction to it: a person who decided early that saying the awkward thing out loud was safer than letting other people say it about her.
Boston University Soccer — and the Allegation She Carried From It
Cooper enrolled at Boston University in 2013 on a Division I soccer scholarship and studied film and television. She played as a midfielder for the Terriers from 2013 to 2015, appearing in 49 games and scoring one goal, on November 14, 2015, against St. Bonaventure, per the college record summarised on her Wikipedia page. She served as a co-captain of the team. After college she worked in advertising and media in New York, the ordinary first job of a communications graduate — and the last ordinary job she would hold.
The soccer years carry a harder story, and it only became public in 2025. In Call Her Alex, Cooper alleged that her BU soccer coach, Nancy Feldman, sexually harassed her: that Feldman fixated on her, commented on her body, questioned her about her dating life, and put a hand on her thigh. Feldman has since retired, and Boston University had not commented on the allegations in the coverage that followed the documentary’s release. This article reports the allegation as Cooper’s account. It is included because Cooper herself chose to make it the emotional centre of her documentary, and because she has since spoken about advocacy for survivors of sexual harassment as part of her public work — but no finding against Feldman is reported anywhere in the sourcing for this article, and none is claimed here.
Call Her Daddy: A Barstool Show, a Breakup, a Solo Rebuild
Cooper launched Call Her Daddy in October 2018 with her college roommate Sofia Franklyn. The two were living in New York, and the show was exactly what its early reputation suggested: two twenty-somethings talking about sex, dating and city life with no filter, recorded in an apartment, distributed through Barstool Sports. The third episode, posted on October 3, 2018, built around a bit called the “Gluck Gluck 9000”, became an early viral marker for the show. Within months it was one of the most talked-about podcasts among young women in America, and one of the most complained-about by everyone else.
The partnership broke in 2020, in public and in acrimony. Franklyn left, and the split played out across social media and Barstool’s own coverage, with contract money and control of the show at the centre of the dispute. Cooper kept the name and rebuilt the show alone. That decision is the hinge of her biography. A co-hosted show that loses a co-host usually dies; Cooper’s version grew. She widened the guest list, softened the premise without abandoning the candour that built the audience, and turned a dating show into an interview show where celebrities talked about mental health, relationships and careers in a register they rarely used elsewhere. The audience that came for the shock stayed for the interviews.
The Million Spotify Deal That Changed Her Life
In June 2021, Cooper signed a three-year exclusive licensing agreement with Spotify reported at $60 million — an average of $20 million a year. At the time it made her Spotify’s highest-earning female podcaster and the second-highest-paid podcaster on the platform, behind only Joe Rogan. Time’s 2021 description of her as “arguably the most successful woman in podcasting” was published in that context, and it has stuck to her ever since because the numbers kept supporting it.
The Spotify years are when the show’s transformation finished. Guests who would never have appeared on the 2018 version — actors on press tours, athletes, musicians, and eventually politicians — started treating Call Her Daddy as a major stop. The show was, by Spotify’s own positioning, the most-listened-to podcast by women on the platform. Cooper also used the Spotify period to build the business around the show rather than just the show itself: a merch line that, per Forbes reporting cited in 2024 coverage, sold $800,000 of merchandise in its first three days after the November 2020 launch, and the early shape of what would become Unwell.
The 5 Million SiriusXM Deal — and What It Actually Covers
In August 2024, Cooper signed a new three-year agreement with SiriusXM, reported by Forbes at up to $125 million. Fortune, citing a person familiar with the deal, reported a figure above $100 million over more than three years. SiriusXM’s own announcement, on August 20, 2024, stated no price at all. That spread is worth stating plainly, because the $125 million figure is constantly quoted as if it were Cooper’s personal salary. It is not, or at least not only that.
Per SiriusXM’s announcement, the deal gives the company exclusive advertising and distribution rights for Call Her Daddy and for programming from the whole Unwell Network, and it created Unwell Radio. The show itself stayed available on every platform, including Spotify. So the headline number covers a bundle — advertising sales, distribution rights, programming development and content from a network of shows — and it is earned over three years, before tax, before agent fees, and before the cost of running that network. At $125 million over three years the average contract value is about $41.7 million a year; that is a useful scale marker, and it is not a payslip. Any profile that quotes the $125 million without that context is overstating what Cooper personally takes home.
Unwell: From One Show to a Network of About 100 People
Cooper founded the Unwell Network in 2023 with her husband, Matt Kaplan, after acquiring ownership of Call Her Daddy. The idea was simple and, in podcasting, unusual for a host to pull off: instead of remaining a single show inside someone else’s company, she would own the company and sign other shows to it. By 2026 the network employed roughly 100 people, per an October 2026 roundup, and housed more than a dozen podcasts aimed at the same young female audience that built Call Her Daddy. She also co-founded Unwell Hydration, an electrolyte drink brand that sits in exactly the wellness category her audience already shops in.
The network model also produced the most public strain of her recent career. Alix Earle, whose Hot Mess podcast was part of the Unwell roster, left the network in 2025, and the departure turned into a slow-burning public feud played out in social-media shade and TikTok dissection. Neither Cooper nor Earle issued extended public statements explaining the split in the coverage cited for this article, and this article does not invent a cause for it. What can be said is that it tested the premise of Unwell: a founder who is also a friend and a boss will eventually have to act as one or the other, and the audience will notice which one she picks.
Then, in August 2026, came the number that reset every net worth conversation about her. WTSL, the investment firm led by entertainment executive Patrick Whitesell, made Unwell’s first outside investment at a reported $500 million pre-money valuation, per Variety’s reporting as summarised by Parade and Celebrity Net Worth. Neither the size of the investment nor Cooper and Kaplan’s ownership percentages were disclosed. That last sentence is the whole story for anyone doing net worth maths: a $500 million company valuation cannot be translated into a personal fortune without knowing what slice of the company she owns, and that slice is not public. Profiles that add $500 million to her name on the back of this deal are guessing.
Call Her Alex: The Documentary That Said the Hard Part Out Loud
Call Her Alex, the two-part Hulu docuseries directed by Ry Russo-Young and produced by Cooper’s own company Unwell, premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2025 and began streaming on Hulu on June 10, 2025. It follows Cooper preparing for her first live tour — the Unwell Tour — and tells her life roughly chronologically, from the Newtown childhood through the Barstool years to the SiriusXM deal. Critics noted the tension at its centre: a documentary produced by its subject’s own company will always read partly as brand-building, and several reviews said so in those terms. Cooper, for her part, put material in it that no brand manager would have chosen, above all the coach allegation described earlier in this article.
The tour itself nearly did not happen, per the documentary’s own account: production manager Jon Dindas appeared ready to walk out the day before the first performance in Boston, exhausted, before staying on and delivering an opening night that went off without a hitch. That sequence, small against the deal numbers, is the most revealing part of the series for anyone trying to understand how Cooper works. She runs a company of about 100 people and a show that reaches millions, and the documentary shows her still doing the job of holding a tired crew together the night before a show.
2026 on Screen: Verity, Hannah Montana, and a Netflix Slate
2026 pushed Cooper from audio into screen work in a way no earlier year had. She made her acting debut in the film adaptation of Verity, appearing as herself, hosting Call Her Daddy and interviewing the character Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway. She hosted the Hannah Montana 20th anniversary special on Disney+, in which Miley Cyrus reflected on the series with Cooper in the interviewer’s chair — a neat full circle for a host Rolling Stone had once labelled Gen Z’s Barbara Walters. Through Unwell she executive-produced the Netflix dating series Let’s Marry Harry, which premiered in August 2026, and staged the Unwell Games on YouTube.
The development slate points further in the same direction: a scripted television adaptation of Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker and a Netflix film of Ali Hazelwood’s Deep End are both in development through Unwell, and Cooper signed a multiyear creative agreement with Google in 2026. The through-line is consistent. Cooper is no longer just a podcast host with a big contract; she is a producer buying and adapting the books her audience reads, and putting them on the platforms her audience watches. If the 2021-2024 story was about deal size, the 2025-2026 story is about ownership of the pipeline.
The Money, Honestly: Why Estimates Range From Million to 0 Million
Here is the disagreement, laid out rather than hidden. Celebrity Net Worth, updated in August 2026, puts Cooper at $200 million. Almost Fearless, in a 2026 update that builds its figure from the Spotify and SiriusXM deals plus brand income and Unwell, minus tax and costs, estimates $60 million to $90 million. Other 2026 trackers sit around $60 million and above, and one 2026 profile puts her at $125 million — a figure that simply repeats the SiriusXM headline as if it were a fortune. Cooper has confirmed none of them.
Both ends of the range can be defended, and that is the point. The $60 million-$90 million end counts what she has plausibly banked from two completed or nearly completed headline deals, after the haircuts that every deal takes: tax, agent and manager fees, and the cost of running a network. The $200 million end counts the same deals plus the paper value of her stake in a company that outside investors valued at $500 million in August 2026 — a stake whose size is undisclosed, so the addition is speculative by construction. Forbes’ 2024 earnings reporting shows the same pattern at a smaller scale: secondary summaries cite both $22 million and $32 million for her 2024 earnings, with the higher figure attached to Forbes’ top-earning creators list. This article publishes the range, $60 million-$200 million, and treats the $200 million figure as the top of an estimate range, not as a verified fact.
One more number belongs in any honest money section: the Studio City, California, property Cooper and Kaplan bought in 2022 for a reported $10.7 million, a 1938-built home of about 5,000 square feet on 1.48 acres with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, renovated over close to a year and finished in 2023. It is the only major property purchase attached to her name in the reporting used here, and it is a useful reality check against the deal headlines: a person with a $200 million fortune and a person with a $60 million fortune can both own a $10.7 million house. The house does not settle the range.
Personal Life: A Zoom Call, a Mexico Wedding, a Baby in October 2026
Cooper met film producer Matt Kaplan on a Zoom call in 2020 and began dating him after a business dinner that followed. Kaplan, 42 in 2026, is a producer whose credits include the To All the Boys films, and he co-founded Unwell with her. They got engaged in 2023 and married in April 2024 in an intimate destination wedding weekend in Riviera Maya, Mexico. The wedding, like much of their relationship, was kept deliberately low-key for a couple whose business is public attention: the announcement came after the fact, on their terms.
On May 17, 2026, Cooper announced that she and Kaplan were expecting their first child, posting photographs in which she cradled her baby bump with the caption “Our family.” In June 2026 she disclosed that she had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, explaining it on the show as the placenta’s hormones causing insulin resistance. On October 20, 2026, she announced the birth on Instagram with a photograph of her newborn in a fuzzy outfit, his face kept out of frame, captioned with a single blue heart emoji — the signal, read by every outlet that covered it, that the baby is a boy. She has not disclosed his name, and this article does not guess it. She is 32, a new mother, and the owner of a company valued at $500 million, all in the same month. That combination, more than any single deal, is the current state of Alex Cooper.
The Disputes She Has Not Settled
Two disputes from 2026 belong in a biography that claims to be complete, and both are reported here as allegations and open questions rather than verdicts. In June 2026, Barstool founder Dave Portnoy alleged that Cooper and Franklyn had schemed to claim sexual harassment in order to exit their Barstool contracts. The allegation was reported widely; an October 2026 roundup noted that it had produced no legal action, no regulatory response and no advertiser pullback. Cooper’s own documentary allegation against her college coach, described earlier, is a separate matter involving a different person and a different period, and the two should not be conflated.
The second open question is the Unwell workplace picture. In the same week Cooper announced her pregnancy in May 2026, Vanity Fair published an investigation into her company, per the October 2026 roundup that notes it without detailing findings that this article could independently verify. This article therefore records that the investigation exists and that it coincided with the pregnancy announcement, and it does not summarise claims it has not verified. A reader who wants a complete picture of Cooper in 2026 should know both that she is celebrated as podcasting’s biggest female success story and that her company, like any company that grows from one person to about 100 employees in three years, is now big enough to be investigated.
What Comes Next for Alex Cooper
The SiriusXM deal runs through 2027 on its three-year term from 2025, which makes 2027 a negotiation year as well as a new-motherhood year. The Unwell slate — Icebreaker, Deep End, the Google creative agreement, the hydration brand — will tell whether the company is a podcast network with side projects or a production company that happens to own a podcast network. And the audience question that has followed her since 2018 remains: whether a host who built her name on candour can keep that candour while running a company, producing other people’s shows, and raising a child in public. Her answer so far has been to keep talking, on mic, about all three at once.
Sources & Reporting
This article was reported from 2025-2026 coverage: Wikipedia’s Alex Cooper (podcaster) profile for birth date, family, education and soccer record; Parade’s November 2026 Alex Cooper net worth profile and Celebrity Net Worth (updated August 2026) for the $200 million estimate, the $60 million Spotify deal, the $125 million SiriusXM deal and the August 2026 $500 million Unwell valuation; Almost Fearless (2026 update) for the $60 million-$90 million estimate and the Forbes 2024 earnings context; SiriusXM’s August 20, 2024 announcement and Forbes/Fortune reporting for the SiriusXM deal’s scope and the price disagreement; PopCulture, Just Jared, BANG Premier and The Hollywood Gossip (October 20-22, 2026) for the baby announcement, the May 17, 2026 pregnancy announcement and the June 2026 gestational diabetes disclosure; Hulu/Tribeca coverage of Call Her Alex (June 2025) for the documentary and the coach allegation, with Boston University’s lack of comment noted; and an October 2026 roundup for the Unwell headcount, the 2026 screen slate, the Portnoy allegation and the Vanity Fair investigation’s existence. Where sources disagreed, this article publishes the range and says so. Cooper has not publicly confirmed her net worth, and no figure here should be read as her own statement.
Alex Cooper Biography 2026: Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Alex Cooper and how old is she in 2026?
Alexandra Cooper is an American podcaster and media entrepreneur, creator and host of Call Her Daddy and founder of the Unwell Network. She was born on August 21, 1994, in Newtown, Pennsylvania, so she is 32 in 2026 and turns 33 on August 21, 2027.
How did Call Her Daddy start, and what happened with Sofia Franklyn?
Cooper launched Call Her Daddy in October 2018 with college roommate Sofia Franklyn under Barstool Sports. Franklyn left in 2020 after a public contract dispute, and Cooper kept the show and rebuilt it alone, widening it from dating talk into celebrity interviews.
How much were Alex Cooper’s Spotify and SiriusXM deals?
Her June 2021 Spotify deal was reported at $60 million over three years. Her August 2024 SiriusXM deal was reported by Forbes at up to $125 million over three years, while Fortune reported above $100 million over more than three years and SiriusXM’s own announcement stated no price. The SiriusXM figure covers advertising and distribution for Call Her Daddy and the whole Unwell Network, not just her personal salary.
What is Alex Cooper’s net worth in 2026?
Estimates range from $60 million to $200 million in 2026. Celebrity Net Worth, updated in August 2026, puts her at $200 million, while Almost Fearless estimates $60 million to $90 million after tax and costs. The gap comes from Unwell’s reported $500 million valuation in August 2026: her ownership share is undisclosed, so its value to her personally cannot be calculated. She has never publicly stated her net worth.
Who is Alex Cooper’s husband, Matt Kaplan?
Matt Kaplan is a film producer who co-founded the Unwell Network with Cooper. They met on a Zoom call in 2020, got engaged in 2023, and married in April 2024 in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
Did Alex Cooper have a baby in 2026?
Yes. Cooper announced her pregnancy on May 17, 2026, disclosed a gestational diabetes diagnosis in June 2026, and announced the birth of her first child on Instagram on October 20, 2026, with a photo captioned with a blue heart emoji, read as indicating a baby boy. She has not disclosed his name.
What is the Unwell Network?
The Unwell Network is the podcast and media company Cooper founded in 2023 with Matt Kaplan after acquiring ownership of Call Her Daddy. By 2026 it employed roughly 100 people, ran Unwell Radio under the SiriusXM deal, and expanded into Unwell Hydration and screen production.
What happened between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle?
Alix Earle’s Hot Mess podcast left the Unwell roster in 2025, and the departure became a public feud played out on social media. Neither Cooper nor Earle issued extended public statements explaining the split in the coverage used for this article, so no cause is claimed here.
About the Author
Nathan Cole covers celebrity and podcasting fortunes for Guide Net Worth, checking every figure against named reporting before it is published.
Corrections: spotted an error in this profile? Contact us and we will correct it promptly. Figures marked as estimates are outside estimates, not statements by the person profiled.
References & Sources
This article has been fact-checked and verified against multiple public sources, financial disclosures, SEC filings, Forbes reports, Celebrity Net Worth databases, and official records. All net worth estimates are based on publicly available information and financial analysis.