Terri Irwin

This is my tribute page to the Irwins'. Steve and his family were my heros, have watched him grow and become the man who everyone around the world adored and looked up too. I was devasted by his passing, and must have cried for weeks, I felt like I knew him inside and out and that's what made him such a beautiful person on and off the camera. I will continue to update and keep his legancy alive through this dedication page.. We LOVE YOU STEVE.
Terri Raines Irwin, AM (born July 20, 1964) is an American-born naturalist, the widow of Australian naturalist Steve Irwin, and owner of Australia Zoo at Beerwah, Queensland, Australia. She co-starred with her husband on The Crocodile Hunter, their unconventional television nature documentary series, as well as their spinoff series, The Crocodile Hunter Diaries and the Croc Files. She has lived in Australia since 1992, when she married Irwin.


Her family was in the trucking business. As a small child, she was exposed to her father constantly bringing home injured animals from the highways which his trucks traversed and this was to eventually instill in her an ongoing commitment to saving and rehabilitating wild animals.While working in the family business in 1986, Raines started a rehabilitation facility called "Cougar Country" to re-educate and release predatory mammals such as foxes, opossums, raccoons, bears, bobcats, and cougars back into the wild. Soon she was handling 300 animals each year.Terri Raines joined an emergency veterinary hospital in 1989 as a veterinary technician to gain further valuable knowledge on the care and support to all kinds of animals. Her life was very busy, as she still kept a hand in helping her dad run the family business, rehabilitating animals through her "Cougar Country", and working spare moments at the vet hospital. In addition, she had 15 cats of her own, several birds, and a dog.In 1991, she went on a tour of Australia, and while visiting wildlife rehabilitation facilities, she had a chance meeting with Steve Irwin, whose father had managed the Australia Zoo. A whirlwind romance followed: they were engaged after just three months, and eight months later, on June 4, 1992, they married. Their first television documentary was filmed on their honeymoon. The footage, shot by John Stainton, became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter, which became successful in America.In an interview before the birth of their second child, Terri Irwin had this to say about her marriage and working together with her husband Steve:"We don't drink, we don't smoke, and we are actually in love and happily married. We love our little girl, we go home to each other at night, and we believe in what we are doing," "Say my husband had a dangerous job and I wasn't with him, I don't know how you go, 'Oh honey, how was it with the police department today? You got all your fingers and toes today?' It would scare me. I'd have to become a police officer and work with him; I couldn't do it."[1] In 2006, Irwin was made an honorary Member of the Order of Australia for services to wildlife conservation and the tourism industry. ("Honorary" membership in the Order of Australia is a version of the award given to non-citizens of Australia.Terri (and her children) were reportedly trekking in Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, when her husband Steve died on the morning of September 4, 2006 after sustaining chest and heart injuries from a short-tail stingray barb. He died shortly after the attack. He was filming an underwater documentary at the time at Batt Reef near Port Douglas in Queensland.