Fans and critics have adored Ray Romano's TV family as the series wraps up after 9 years

It's hard to believe now, but once upon a time, the hit family comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond" was skidding toward extinction. But the show not only recovered, it prospered, and its final new episode will wrap up a strong, nine-year run on May 16.

But back in 1997, that seemed unlikely. "Raymond" aired on Friday nights thoroughly unnoticed.

That's when CBS President Leslie Moonves told producer Phil Rosenthal that he had one more chance when he allowed "Raymond" to borrow a Monday spot tucked between "Cosby" and "Murphy Brown" for six weeks.

"He said, 'The critics love the show; we love the show. But if you don't perform better here, we can't help you anymore,' " Rosenthal recalls. "That's when I was actually the most nervous."

Fretting is a natural state for many of the show's key people.

"It never ends," says star Ray Romano. "Now I'm worried: 'Well, nobody really wants to watch the finale. It's not going to get the fanfare that the other ones got.' "

It will get some attention anyway. CBS is planning an hour-long documentary beforehand at 8 p.m. The network wanted an extra-long finale but didn't get one. "(We) didn't want to milk a half-hour into an hour," Romano says.

Adds Rosenthal: "The story warranted a half-hour. The story comes first."

It always has, co-star Brad Garrett says. "This show is obviously about the writing."

That priority is obvious. Rosenthal and four key writers and producers -- Tucker Cawley, Lew Schneider, Steve Skrovan, and Jeremy Stevens -- have stayed for all nine seasons.

"The main thing that happened is Phil never left," Skrovan says. "What happens is the show runner usually leaves after three years and then falls on his (butt)."

Rosenthal stayed, meshing neatly with Romano. It was a link that came almost by accident.

"When they offered me the show, they said, 'Now you have to find someone to write it and create it,' " Romano recalls. "And I met about a dozen guys. ... I chose Phil because there was this sensibility, compatibility. He had the Jewish family. I had the Italian family."

They added the Irish perspective of Patricia Heaton and Peter Boyle, as Romano's wife and father. Here were three cultures telling of families that fret, fume and laugh.

"We're both from Queens," Rosenthal says of his Romano link. "We didn't know that going in. I guess some of the values are the same."

That was obvious, Skrovan says. "(It) was a great, symbiotic relationship, the same kind of relationship that happened with Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.

Both wanted an uncluttered show, one that rarely needed gimmicks or new settings.

"Most of the time they're not going anywhere," Rosenthal says. "They're in the kitchen; maybe they'll go into the living room."

When "Raymond" premiered in 1996, Rosenthal says, it reflected Romano's real life.

"His parents really did live close by in Queens. And his brother really was a police sergeant who was divorced and lived with the parents and was a little jealous."

Romano had three children then. Now he's 47 and has four. Heaton, also 47, has four sons, two of them born since the show started.

Boyle, 69, and Doris Roberts, 75, play Ray's parents.

Garrett, 45, is the hapless brother, Robert.

Well, semi-hapless. Rosenthal says he always intended Robert to meet a good woman. That's Amy, played by Monica Horan.

Rosenthal is married to Horan in real life, but he never told her what would happen on the show. "I love keeping her in the dark," he says.

Finally, Amy and Robert married. "She's really the only thing in Robert's life that ever worked out," Garrett says.

Nothing huge will happen in the finale, Rosenthal says. Life will go on amid fretting and grumbling.

But "Raymond" leaves as a hit. In its first full season in that Monday time slot, it finished No. 30 in the Nielsen ratings.

It was No. 11 the second year and jumped to No. 4 three years later.

It has stayed near the top 10 now, even with frequent reruns. Everybody -- well, lots of people, anyway -- loves "Raymond."

Best of 'Ray'

Amid the 210 "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes, there are plenty of individual favorites. We asked the "Raymond" stars and creators which ones they liked. Here's what they said:

• Ray Romano (star and co-creator): "I like the PMS episode, a big favorite." That one, a tour de force for Heaton, was in the fourth season. Other favorites were two from the sixth season -- "Talk to Your Daughter," plus a flashback episode in which he and Heaton were "playing two single people who are not in love, but falling in like, almost."

• Patricia Heaton (Ray's wife, Debra): "I've always loved the one where Brad takes his little Timmy the Cop dummy out and does a ventriloquist show, because we found out (that) Marie and Frank left him behind at a truck stop. I love that episode; it's always endeared me to Brad's character." Timmy was introduced in the second season.

• Peter Boyle (Frank Barone): "We did one where Doris drives the car into Ray and Patty's living room. Favorite entrance of all time."

• Doris Roberts (Marie Barone): "I loved the one in which I did the sculpture. I thought that was wonderful." Marie's instructor raves over the sculpture, but the family questioned the image and its resemblance to certain body parts. (Season six).

• Brad Garrett (Robert, Ray's brother): He's fond of the fourth-season scene in which he was chased by a bull. First, he said, Rosenthal asked him how fast he could run. "I said, 'Look, being 6-foot-8, if I could run, I wouldn't be on your show.' "

• Monica Horan (Robert's wife, Amy; and producer and co-creator Phil Rosenthal's real-life wife): "I love anything Italian, the 'Mia Familia,' where (the men) were all singing." That was in the second season. So were two other favorites in which Marie hid the ingredients of her meatballs and Debra wrote an angry letter to Marie. "Frank reads it out loud," Horan recalls, "And he says, 'You're my favorite writer.' "