RIVER BUTCHER (formerly Rhea Harriett Butcher), who was born on this date, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, producer, and podcast host. Butcher is best known for personal, observational comedy focused on his vegetarianism, feminism, love of baseball, and experiences as a queer person. Butcher was raised in the Kenmore neighborhood of Akron, Ohio, an only child.

Butcher began his comedy career performing improv in Chicago at The Second City and has since performed stand-up at clubs including Zanies, the Jukebox, and Flappers, as well as Chicago Underground Comedy, The Hideout, The Lincoln Lodge, UCB, Cole’s, and Meltdown. He made his late-night debut on Conan in June 2016.

In the fall of 2014, Butcher appeared alongside Cameron Esposito in a series of videos for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures titled “Ask a Lesbian”. Butcher and Esposito also co-hosted the web series “She Said” for Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls Network. The two wrote and starred together again in Take My Wife, on the comedy streaming service Seeso. Butcher also co-hosted the stand-up comedy podcast Put Your Hands Together with Cameron Esposito, which was recorded weekly in front of a live audience at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles until it ended in July 2019.

Butcher met fellow comedian Cameron Esposito at an open mic hosted by Esposito. The two soon started collaborating and then began to date. In December 2015, Butcher and Esposito married onstage at The Hideout in Esposito’s hometown of Chicago, Illinois. In August 2018, Butcher and Esposito announced their separation to “live individual lives.” Their split was covered in a Vanity Fair article. In September 2019, Esposito wrote an article for the New York Times discussing the couple’s pending divorce.

Butcher is a trans man and uses he and they pronouns. In November 2021, Butcher announced that he had changed his name to River.