By Jill Vejnoska | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Everybody Loves Raymond" was a "family" sitcom in the true sense of the word, the TV equivalent of the sibling who always violated the imaginary line down the middle of the bedroom you shared or made faces across the dinner table that got you in trouble. Nobody else could drive you so crazy or make you laugh anywhere near so hard. And it was only after he or she left for good that you got all weepy inside.

It hasn't always been easy opening our homes to the Barones of "Raymond," which tonight ends its nine-year, 12-Emmy run on CBS. Forget imaginary lines. This family knew no boundaries. They were intrusive and argumentative, and just when you thought you couldn't take it anymore, they'd do something so funny or uncloyingly sweet, you'd forgive them everything. Just like your real family.

So, no tears. Instead, here are seven reasons we loved Raymond, one for each night of the week we'll find ourselves getting drawn back to it in reruns and on DVD. Because, hey, it's family. What else are you gonna do?

The end. Ironically, the show about relatives overstaying their welcome is going out in a quiet, dignified way that's become atypical (is "Friends" over yet?). Tonight's final episode is the usual half-hour (the preceding one-hour special's a CBS affair), and there were just 16 new episodes this year. CBS wanted more, but, says star Ray Romano, "We didn't think we had any good ideas."

The nepotism. Telling family stories on TV? Three words: Kathie Lee, Cody. Shudder. But then Romano regaled series creator Phil Rosenthal with real-life stories of living across the street from his pushy parents and his older brother, a cop, and the rest was history. Literally. "Almost 90 percent" of the stories are inspired by real ones, says Rosenthal, who mined his own family life as well (his real-life wife, the wonderful Monica Horan, played Ray's sister-in-law Amy). And if episodes like Season 6's "The Angry Family" cut too close to the funny bone, who cares? "It would cause another fight [at home], and there'd be another story," Romano says.

The kids. "It's not really about the kids," Romano confided in the title sequence used in the first season. Yeah, well, neither was "Family Ties" before Michael J. Fox stole the show. Fortunately, though, while Ray and Debra's (Patricia Heaton) three adorable blond moppets grew up over nine seasons, the adults didn't. Marie once purposely mislabeled a spice jar so Debra would remain the worse cook, and Ray and Debra waged an unspoken two-week standoff over which one of them would unpack a suitcase. Meanwhile, a children's T-ball game in Season 3 turned into a John Cheever-worthy suburban nightmare when Debra's pretzels and Hawaiian punch failed to meet the strict standards of the SS-like team parents' "approved snack list." The kids stole the show, all right. The big ones.

The nicknames. For a show with so much yelling, "Everybody Loves Raymond" was all about the poetry of everyday language. There was a certain lyric quality to Frank's (Peter Boyle) occasional, exasperated "Jeezaloo" that will long outlive the "Holy crap!" he barked so often that Boyle recently joked to reporters that "a lot of nuns" repeat it to him. But nothing was as good or as E.E. Cummings-ish imponderable as Ray's endless string of nicknames for Debra: "Hey, Bubble Wrap," "Hey, Hot Little Chuckle Monkey," "Hey, Pepper Squat," "Hey, Banjo Pants" . . . They all made so little sense, it eventually ended up making perfect sense: It was the language of love. Jeezaloo, indeed.

The sex. It was always there, although apparently not enough for CBS. "If anything, we got, 'Can you make it hotter and sexier?' " Rosenthal says. Instead, "Raymond" took the opposite route, distinguishing itself from almost every other tired domestic sitcom where the characters complain about not getting enough action. Here that became a badge of honor. In the episode "Good Girls," Ray vied with brother Robert (Brad Garrett) to make his woman seem like the more chaste one before marriage, and in "Sex Talk," Marie made sure everyone knew she and Frank barely did the deed anymore. It was all lies, of course. Everyone lies about sex. "Everybody Loves Raymond" was one of the few shows to make that point in a consistently funny way.

The real Godfather, Marie Barone. She'd make you an offer you couldn't refuse ("Sit down, dear, I'll make you a sandwich."), and unlike Tony Soprano, she never needed a psychiatrist. Well, OK, she never saw a psychiatrist. What essentially began as a comic sidekick role gradually evolved into one of the most fascinating characters on television, a dimpled, diabolical force at the center of everything.

Don Barone held all the secrets, except when she didn't ("I'm not the one who danced topless in Atlantic City," she dropped the dime on Robert's first wife in a flashback episode), and what she didn't know, she didn't forgive. A finger-wagging "I don't like that. . ." was her horse's head in the bed, and food was her garrote: When Debra insisted on hosting Thanksgiving, Marie brought her own turkey and trimmings, and when Raymond accidentally revealed he'd had a "wild" teen party 20 years earlier, she cut off his cake supply. Amy and Debra briefly joined forces in Season 8 to try and take down the Don, but nobody ever got the best of Marie.

The spinoff. There isn't one. Not yet, anyway. Like the weird cousin who keeps showing up with platters of deviled eggs for several weeks after the family reunion, most quick spinoffs have a slightly desperate air that ends up making you think less of them and the original. (Or perhaps you enjoy cousin "Joey's" eggs.) "The King of Queens" wasn't a spinoff, although its star, Kevin James, showed up several times the first three seasons playing a similar character who was a friend of Ray's. Spinoff rumors involving Robert began cropping up last year, but Rosenthal said last week: "There's nothing. There was some talk about it, but it's probably on hold [for awhile]."

Would Ray show up in the first episode? "I wouldn't be against that," Romano said, with what constitutes raging enthusiasm for him and his TV alter ego. Ray Barone never trusted success or good fortune, whether it was a doctor's prescribing him more time on the links ("Golf," Season 2) or his suddenly more affectionate wife ("Debra's Workout," Season 4).

It made for great, enduring comedy and it's why it's a little hard to accept Romano's vision of himself in 10 years.

"I'm going to be riding around on a bike yelling, 'Remember me?'"

Please. You're family. Who could forget?