Anthony Rodia

Westchester, a dare, and a 430-seat gamble

Rodia's route into comedy did not run through the club circuit. He spent his working life as a finance manager at a luxury car dealership, the first-generation son of Italian immigrants raised in Westchester County, New York. He was 43 when the Tribune Chronicle profiled him in August 2023, which places his start in stand-up well into adulthood rather than straight out of college.

The beginning, by his own telling to that paper, was a relative daring him onto an open-mic stage. What he did next is the part that explains the rest of the career: rather than grinding bar rooms for a decade, he rented a 430-seat performing arts theatre in White Plains and sold it out himself. The dealership job stayed on for a while, until the side gig earned more than the day job and became the only job. Digital Journal, reviewing him in May 2022, put the scale of that early push at roughly 100 shows in the nine months after he returned to comedy in 2019.

The self-promotion instinct carried into the billing. For years he described himself as the king of off-the-boat comedy, a line that still appeared on venue copy as recently as his New Jersey Performing Arts Center listing — a reminder that the Italian-American framing was deliberate branding, not an accident of material.

Uncle Vinny and the ninety-three days

The pandemic should have ended it. Rodia lost 155 booked gigs to Covid closures, a wipe-out he described to the Tribune Chronicle. What replaced them was a video habit: one a week, then a couple a week, then a straight run of 93 consecutive days with a new video every day.

The characters came out of his own family. Uncle Vinny, drawn partly from his father, began with a Snapchat filter that bulged the eyes; Rodia posted a clip on a bet with his cousin, the reaction was immediate, and his sister pushed him to give the character a page of its own. Zia Lucia followed, and the recurring Road Rage Wednesday segment gave Uncle Vinny a weekly slot. One clip — Uncle Vinny reacting to the Pope cancelling Easter — passed a million views on YouTube on its own.

The arithmetic of that period is the whole story of his touring. He told the Tribune Chronicle he was gaining 25,000 to 60,000 new followers a week. By the time Digital Journal caught him in May 2022, that had settled into more than 900,000 social followers and over 22 million YouTube views. When venues reopened, rooms that had previously held 200 people for him turned into ten sold-out club shows in a row.

Two specials, self-funded first

Rodia financed his own entry into the special market. In August 2023 he said he would record his first hour two weeks after a 15 September date at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown, Ohio — a 7.30pm show with tickets at $49 to $69 — and that he was paying for the shoot himself and would go looking for a distributor once it existed.

That hour became Totally Relatable, released on Amazon in 2024, built around parenting, marriage, being raised by immigrant parents and the friction of trying to apply old-country discipline to modern children. Venues have been describing it as the breakout ever since, and the pattern of double-nights and sell-outs in the schedule supports the claim.

The second special landed on 4 August 2026. Laugh Till It Hurts runs an hour, was filmed at the Count Basie Center for the Arts, directed by Charlie Fonville, and was released through Comedy Dynamics and Super Nice Guys to Prime Video, Apple TV and other digital platforms. It covers similar ground — family, marriage, the daily attritions — which is consistent rather than lazy: the material is observational and domestic by design, and the audience that found him through Uncle Vinny is the audience the specials are addressed to.

Where he stands in October 2026

Rodia is booked through CAA, with Matt Frost handling the bookings and Dom DiBello at Paesano Entertainment on press. That is theatre-and-casino-circuit representation, and the schedule reads accordingly.

There is a wobble in the branding worth noting. His own site has billed the current national run as Highly Dysfunctional, while venue after venue is selling the same shows as the Insanely Funny Tour, positioned as the follow-up to the Totally Relatable and Laugh Till It Hurts tours. Either way the dates are the same: Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis on 3 October 2026, two nights at the Paramount in Huntington on 23 and 24 October, a three-night stand at Hilarities 4th Street Theatre in Cleveland from 6 to 8 November, Ovation Hall in Atlantic City on 14 November, Paramount Hudson Valley in Peekskill on 20 November, two nights at the St George Theatre on Staten Island on 28 and 29 November, and a Florida swing through Orlando, Sarasota and Naples in December.

Demand is outrunning supply in the north-east. The Wilbur in Boston lists his date as sold out, the Paramount in Middletown sold out a 14 March 7.30pm show, and Paramount Hudson Valley is bringing him back on the strength of two previous sell-outs there. The Peekskill run also carries a VIP package with a meet-and-greet and a tour badge, which is the sort of upsell that only works for an act whose audience arrived through a personal relationship with the videos.

Alongside the touring he keeps a broadcast presence, co-hosting Little Bit of Laughs with Goumba Johnny — a show his venue listings describe variously as a radio show and a podcast.

The set, and how it holds a room

The headline set runs about 90 minutes, according to the running time published for the St George Theatre dates. The content is not fixed. Rodia told the Tribune Chronicle he changes material nightly and does not repeat the same jokes in the same order from one show to the next, and the current tour is marketed on fresh material plus fast improvisation rather than a locked hour — which fits a performer who built his following on reacting to things as they happened.

The topic set is narrow and worked hard: marriage, his wife and daughter, his immigrant father, driving and road rage, air travel, and the specifics of being Italian-American in New York. Character work is part of the live show as well as the videos, and the physical side matters — reviewers keep coming back to the facial work and the mannerisms rather than the punchlines.

The best-documented night is still the May 2022 double-header at the Paramount in Huntington, where Goumba Johnny opened and both performances sold out. Digital Journal graded the set an A and quoted Rodia backstage as 'a bit shellshocked' by the turnout; an audience member there made the point that carries the act beyond its ethnic framing, that the life experiences land regardless of the listener's background. Fan notes on the St George listing run the same way, one summing him up as 'the real thing. Funny as hell.'