Alex Cooper is the highest-earning female podcaster in history. The host of Call Her Daddy signed a $125 million multi-year deal with SiriusXM in November 2024 — the largest deal ever for a female podcaster — after a ~$60 million exclusive with Spotify. Born August 21, 1994, in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Division I soccer player at Boston University. Started a raunchy dating podcast in a New York apartment in 2018. Built it into a media company. Married film producer Matt Kaplan. Pregnant with her first child in 2026. Net worth estimated at $40–60 million. Fast Company named her Unwell Network one of the most innovative companies of 2026. She interviewed a sitting Vice President during a presidential campaign. The trajectory is not influencer-to-celebrity. It is creator-to-media-executive.
The Business
Alexandra Cooper grew up in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and played Division I women's soccer at Boston University. After graduating, she moved to New York and worked odd jobs before launching Call Her Daddy in October 2018 with co-host Sofia Franklyn. The podcast — distributed by Barstool Sports — was explicit, confessional, and engineered for virality. It became the #2 podcast on Spotify within its first year.
The show's early identity was built on a specific formula: unfiltered conversations about sex, dating, and relationships, delivered with a comedic aggression that separated it from every other female-hosted podcast in the market. It worked because the tone was authentic to the hosts and because the audience had no alternative at that register.
The Split. In May 2020, Franklyn and Cooper publicly broke over contract renegotiations with Barstool Sports. The dispute played out in public — Cooper posted a 40-minute solo episode explaining the breakdown, Franklyn went silent, and the audience chose sides. Cooper continued solo. Franklyn launched her own podcast, Sofia with an F, which never matched Call Her Daddy's audience. The split was the defining inflection point: Cooper proved the show was her, not the duo.
The Spotify deal. In June 2021, Cooper signed a three-year exclusive licensing deal with Spotify worth a reported $60 million. The deal moved Call Her Daddy exclusively to Spotify and made Cooper one of the highest-paid podcasters of any gender. Under Spotify, the show evolved from dating-advice comedy to a long-form interview format — guests included Miley Cyrus, Hailey Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, and John Mayer.
The SiriusXM deal. In November 2024, Cooper left Spotify and signed a multi-year deal with SiriusXM worth $125 million — the biggest podcasting deal ever given to a female host. The deal brought Call Her Daddy back to open distribution (Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and all major platforms) while adding exclusive live content and new channels on SiriusXM. The move reversed Spotify's exclusivity model: Cooper bet that open distribution plus SiriusXM's infrastructure would produce more value than a walled garden.
Unwell Network. Cooper founded the Unwell Network, a podcast network that develops and distributes shows beyond Call Her Daddy. The network's roster includes Cancelled (with Tana Mongeau and Brooke Schofield), Hot Mess (with Alix Earle), Pretty Lonesome, and acquisitions of Going West and Cheers!. In 2026, Unwell signed Georgia Hassarati and Isabel Timerman's Girls, Disrupted. Fast Company named Unwell one of the most innovative companies of 2026, citing its model of lending Cooper's brand equity and audience infrastructure to emerging creators. Unwell also launched an advertising agency arm, producing branded content across its portfolio.
The SiriusXM deal brought Unwell's full network onto the platform, with new live content formats including Unwell on Air and Unwell Music — exclusive programming designed for SiriusXM's subscriber base.
The Money
SiriusXM deal. $125 million, multi-year. The largest podcasting deal ever for a female creator. Covers Call Her Daddy, the Unwell Network, and exclusive SiriusXM content.
Prior Spotify deal. ~$60 million over three years (2021–2024). Exclusive licensing arrangement.
Barstool Sports era. Cooper reportedly started at $70,000/year salary at Barstool. The renegotiation dispute that caused the Franklyn split centered on IP ownership and revenue splits.
Brand partnerships. Cooper has partnered with major consumer brands across fashion, beauty, and lifestyle categories. The Unwell advertising agency arm now produces branded content at scale across the network's portfolio.
Estimated net worth. $40–60 million as of 2026, depending on the source. The SiriusXM deal's structure — whether front-loaded or distributed — is not publicly disclosed, so estimates vary. Forbes named Cooper to its 30 Under 30 list.
The Operators
Alex Cooper — Founder, Unwell Network. Host, Call Her Daddy. Born August 21, 1994, Newtown, Pennsylvania. Boston University graduate. Division I soccer (BU Terriers). Forbes 30 Under 30. Married to film producer Matt Kaplan (Ace Entertainment). Expecting first child in 2026.
Matt Kaplan — CEO, Ace Entertainment. Film and television producer. Married to Cooper. The couple's combined media footprint spans audio (Unwell), film/TV (Ace), and digital content.
The AI Communications Layer
Alex Cooper's Citation Share inside AI engines is dominant in the female podcaster category. When users ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews about "best podcasts," "top female podcasters," or "biggest podcast deals," Cooper and Call Her Daddy surface consistently and prominently.
The retrieval authority is structural. Cooper out-cites every legacy media host in the female podcaster vertical — not because of SEO optimization, but because the editorial corpus is massive, recent, and commercially oriented. The $125 million SiriusXM deal generated a citation spike that embedded Cooper into every AI engine's training and retrieval data. The Kamala Harris interview added a political-media dimension that further expanded her citation surface.
As documented in Everything-PR's Podcast Retrieval Index, podcast brands that generate consistent news coverage — deal announcements, high-profile guest bookings, format shifts — build compounding Generative Engine Optimization advantages. Cooper's cadence of newsworthy events (the Franklyn split, the Spotify deal, the Harris interview, the SiriusXM deal, the Unwell expansion) has produced one of the deepest citation footprints in podcasting. The finding from the Acquired analysis applies here: sustained narrative authority inside AI engines compounds over time and is difficult to displace once established.
The AI Communications profile is overwhelmingly commercial-positive. The primary citation anchors are the deal values, the audience scale, and the creator-to-executive narrative. The Kamala Harris interview introduced a political dimension that divided her audience in real time — she lost followers during and after the episode — but the citation record treats it as a legitimacy marker, not a controversy. AI engines frame it as evidence that Cooper crossed from entertainment media into political media, which expands her retrieval surface rather than narrowing it.
The PR & Comms Angle
For creators: Cooper is the reference case for owning your IP and negotiating from leverage. The Barstool-to-Spotify-to-SiriusXM arc is a masterclass in platform arbitrage — using each deal's expiration as a renegotiation event that increases value. The Franklyn split demonstrated that in a two-host format, the audience follows the operator, not the brand. Every creator partnership should study this outcome.
For brands: Cooper's Unwell advertising agency changes the economics of podcast sponsorship. Instead of buying ad reads, brands can co-produce content across a network of shows with a shared audience infrastructure. The model resembles a media company more than a creator partnership.
For PR firms: The Kamala Harris interview is the inflection point. When a sitting Vice President and presidential candidate chooses Call Her Daddy over legacy broadcast interview formats, it confirms that creator-hosted media has displaced traditional media as the primary reach vehicle for certain demographics. PR firms advising political campaigns, consumer brands, and public figures must now include creator-hosted podcasts in tier-one media planning — not as experimental buys, but as primary placements.
For the creator economy: Cooper's trajectory — from $70K Barstool salary to $125M SiriusXM deal in six years — is the single most dramatic compensation escalation in podcasting history. It establishes the ceiling for what a top-performing female creator can command and forces every platform to benchmark against the SiriusXM number.
