Heidi Van Pelt is an American vegan chef, nutrition counselor and entrepreneur who became a widely searched name in the early 2000s because of her marriage to former child actor Taran Noah Smith. Smith played Mark Taylor, the youngest son, on the hit sitcom Home Improvement, which ran from 1991 to 1999. Van Pelt herself was never a Hollywood actress and never appeared on the show. Her public profile came almost entirely from a relationship the press found impossible to ignore: she was 16 years older than the teenage television star she married.
That one fact has defined how most of the internet remembers her, but it is only part of the story. Before and after the marriage, Van Pelt built a working life around food, nutrition and small business. This article puts the documented facts in order and separates what is reliably reported from what is only rumored.
Heidi Van Pelt Quick Bio
| Full Name | Heidi Van Pelt |
| Born | July 11, 1968 (widely reported; not confirmed by a primary public record — some secondary sources report 1967) |
| Birthplace | Missouri, United States |
| Age | 58 in 2026 (based on the widely reported birth date) |
| Occupation | Vegan chef, nutrition counselor, entrepreneur |
| Known For | Former wife of Taran Noah Smith; co-founder of Playfood |
| Ex-Husband | Taran Noah Smith (married April 27, 2001; divorce filed February 2, 2007) |
| Children | One child, Vox, born around 2008, with second husband Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle (reported by The Pitch, July 2010) |
| Current Status | Divorced; living a private life away from the spotlight |
| Net Worth | Not publicly confirmed — published estimates conflict and none comes from a verified source |
Early Life in Missouri
Heidi Van Pelt was born in Missouri and grew up mainly in the Kansas City area. According to a detailed 2007 profile in The Pitch, a Kansas City news outlet, her parents divorced when she was barely a year old. At Oak Park and Blue Springs high schools she was known as the odd, artsy girl.
After graduating in 1986, she studied fashion design at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, then tried German and philosophy at the University of Missouri, and moved to Seattle in 1988 for the University of Washington’s Russian Studies program — she had hoped to become a CIA agent. She left with one semester remaining, started a small media company called Emergent Films, and later moved to Los Angeles, where she found the work that defined her.
From Film Work to Vegan Cooking
Los Angeles turned out to be the place where Van Pelt found her calling. She had been a vegetarian for several years, and in Seattle she had met animal-rights activists who also avoided dairy, eggs and honey. In Los Angeles she turned that interest into work, training as a vegan chef and building a reputation as a cook for Hollywood gatherings and parties. In 1994 she earned an online certificate from the American Academy of Nutrition and worked as a nutritional counselor at a clinic in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She also co-hosted a show called Raw Health on the local Pacifica radio station.
By the late 1990s she was hosting raw-food dinner parties at her home, and it was at one of those gatherings that her life changed direction.
How Heidi Van Pelt Met Taran Noah Smith
According to The Pitch’s account, the actors Zachary Ty Bryan and Taran Noah Smith, both young stars of Home Improvement, came to a raw-food dinner party at Van Pelt’s house in 1998. Smith was 14 years old at the time, and Van Pelt paid him little attention at first. Other accounts place the first meeting at a Hollywood party or a charity event, but the dinner-party account comes from the most detailed contemporary reporting.
The two stayed in touch and grew close over the next two years. Smith had started Home Improvement at seven and, by his own account, had never had the chance to decide what he wanted to do with his life; at 16 he knew he did not want to act anymore. The relationship that followed became one of the most talked-about celebrity marriages of the early 2000s.
The Marriage That Made Headlines
A 16-Year Age Gap
When Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith married, the numbers alone guaranteed headlines. Smith was 17 years old. Van Pelt was 32, turning 33. The 16-year age gap, combined with Smith’s fame as a child star, made the marriage a tabloid fixture. Smith later said his mother told the press that Van Pelt was after his money, while Van Pelt said she had her own way of making a living. The facts are straightforward: two adults, one of them barely an adult, married in 2001 and divorced six years later. Smith was also in a bitter dispute with his parents at the time: in 2001 he filed for emancipation to gain control of his approximately 1.5 million dollar trust fund from his Home Improvement earnings, and later said he had come to realise his parents had been trying to protect it.
The 2001 Wedding
Van Pelt and Smith were married on April 27, 2001. The Pitch reported that the ceremony was a small, barefoot exchange of mood rings, arranged with the help of an old Kansas City friend, David Scott Whinery, a lawyer who had taken Van Pelt to her high school senior prom in 1985. A California judge initially rejected the marriage, and the couple settled in Lawrence, Kansas, to wait until Smith turned 18 the following April. Some bio sites describe the wedding as having taken place in a strip club in Topeka, but that detail is not confirmed by the stronger contemporary reporting. For context on Smith’s fame, he played Mark Taylor in 201 episodes of Home Improvement and won two Young Artist Awards for the role. More about his life and career is documented on Wikipedia.
Playfood: The Vegan Cheese Business
The most substantial professional legacy of the marriage was Playfood. In 2005, Smith and Van Pelt formed the California-based company, which made non-dairy cheese, mainly from cashews, along with other vegan and organic foods. Van Pelt developed the recipes, drawing on the cashew-based cheese sauces she had been perfecting for years, and the company grew from a small kitchen operation into a formal business with a restaurant side.
Playfood was genuinely early: plant-based cheese was a niche idea in 2005, long before vegan food became mainstream. When the marriage broke down, Playfood broke down with it, dissolving amid disputes about its direction and ownership.
The Divorce in 2007
After nearly six years of marriage, Van Pelt and Smith filed for divorce on February 2, 2007. The split had been coming for some time: according to The Pitch, the marriage had gone badly by 2005, and Van Pelt moved back to Kansas City, the city where she had been raised. The divorce was reported in the Kansas City Star and other outlets at the time, and it closed the most public chapter of her life. Smith later said he had realized his parents had been trying to protect him. Van Pelt went back to the work she knew, this time in the Midwest rather than in Los Angeles.
The business ended in court as well as in divorce. In February 2007, Smith filed a lawsuit and a request for a temporary injunction against Van Pelt, accusing her of moving funds from their shared company, Playfood Inc., into a separate company she controlled, Playfood Manufacturing LLC. The dispute over the company lasted for months.
Life After the Divorce: Fud Restaurant in Kansas City
Back in Kansas City, Van Pelt started small again, running a raw-vegan pop-up at local markets. The response was strong enough to grow into a full restaurant called Fud, which opened in April 2010 at 813 W. 17th Street on the city’s Westside, in the former Sun Ray Cafe space she had taken over with her second husband, Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle. Fud served playful vegan dishes in a room that welcomed vegans, non-vegans and the simply curious, and it built a loyal local following over a seven-year run. In August 2017 Van Pelt abruptly closed Fud, ending the restaurant’s seven-year run. According to The Pitch, she had come to believe her employees were conspiring against her, and on the afternoon of Friday, August 4, she arrived at the restaurant with her attorney and a police officer and ordered everyone — cooks, servers and customers — to leave.
Her ex-husband and co-owner Jerimiah Rozzo, who owned 49 percent of Fud to her 51 percent, said the two were trying to work out the legal details of ending their partnership. Van Pelt said she expected Fud to reopen soon with new staff, but it never reopened, and the closure marked the end of her last known public venture.
After the divorce she remarried: her second husband was Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle, and The Pitch reported in 2010 that the couple were the parents of a 22-month-old child, Vox. By 2017, The Pitch described Rozzo as her ex-husband and Füd co-owner.
Heidi Van Pelt Net Worth
There is no credible, verified figure for Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth, and this article will not give one. No authoritative financial publication has reported her wealth, and her divorce settlement terms were never made public. The numbers that circulate online, typically 300,000 dollars, 500,000 dollars, 900,000 dollars or 1 million dollars, come from low-authority bio sites that do not cite sources and disagree with one another. That disagreement is itself the evidence that none of them should be trusted. What can be said is where her income came from: work as a vegan chef, caterer and nutritional counsellor, co-founding Playfood, and later running Füd restaurant in Kansas City.
Where Is Heidi Van Pelt Now?
As of 2026, Heidi Van Pelt lives a largely private life. After Fud closed in 2017, she stepped away from public life almost entirely. She has not returned to restaurant ownership, she rarely appears in interviews or local news, and she has no verified public social media account under her name. Some secondary profiles place her in Kansas City or in Los Angeles, but those claims conflict and none is supported by a recent interview or public record, so her current whereabouts are best described as private and unconfirmed. Smith moved on to work far from Hollywood, including disaster relief volunteering and, later, teaching people to pilot submarines.
Why People Still Search for Heidi Van Pelt
Her name keeps circulating because it sits at the intersection of several curiosities: the Home Improvement connection, the 16-year age gap, the vegan food angle, and the mystery of a person who was famous for a few years and then deliberately disappeared from public view. She is also a reminder that the partners of famous people often have full lives of their own: Van Pelt was a chef, a counselor, a business owner and a restaurateur before and after the marriage that made her name.
For readers who like this kind of story, the Celebrity section has more profiles of famous partners and ex-partners, including Elizabeth Huberdeau, the first wife of John Cena, and Melissa Womer, the first wife of Jim Carrey.
Heidi Van Pelt FAQs
Who is Heidi Van Pelt?
Heidi Van Pelt is an American vegan chef, nutrition counselor and entrepreneur. She is best known as the former wife of Home Improvement actor Taran Noah Smith, whom she married in 2001. She also co-founded the vegan food company Playfood and later owned the Fud restaurant in Kansas City.
How old was Heidi Van Pelt when she married Taran Noah Smith?
Van Pelt was 32 years old, turning 33, when she married Smith on April 27, 2001. Smith was 17 at the time, making the age gap between them 16 years. The gap was the main reason the marriage attracted so much media attention.
Are Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith still together?
No. The couple filed for divorce on February 2, 2007, after nearly six years of marriage. Van Pelt moved back to Kansas City, and Smith went on to work outside the entertainment industry. There are no publicly confirmed reports of a current husband or partner for Van Pelt.
What was Playfood?
Playfood was a California-based vegan food company that Van Pelt and Smith formed in 2005. It specialized in non-dairy cheese made from cashews, along with other vegan and organic foods, and it also operated as a restaurant. The business dissolved when the couple divorced in 2007.
What is Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth?
There is no credible, verified figure for Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth. Figures quoted online, typically between 300,000 dollars and 1 million dollars, come from low-authority bio sites that do not cite sources and disagree with one another, so none of them should be treated as fact.
Does Heidi Van Pelt have children?
Yes — one child. The Pitch reported in 2010 that Van Pelt and her second husband, Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle, were the parents of a 22-month-old child named Vox. No other children are publicly confirmed.
How old is Heidi Van Pelt now?
Van Pelt was widely reported to have been born on July 11, 1968, which would make her 58 years old in 2026. That birth date is widely repeated in secondary biographies but has not been confirmed from a primary public record.
