Terri Raines was born in Eugene, Oregon in the USA in 1964 joining two older sisters. Her father ran a successful construction business – very much a family affair and in 1979 Terri joined her dad to learn all the skills of managing their large trucking business. As a small child, Terri was exposed to her father constantly bringing home injured animals from the highways his trucks traversed and this was to eventually instill in her an ongoing commitment to saving and rehabilitating wild animals.

In 1986 she started a rehab facility called "Cougar Country" to re-educate and release predatory mammals such as fox, possum, raccoon, bears, bob-cats, and of course cougars back into the wild. Soon she was handling 300 animals a year.

Later in 1989 she joined an Emergency Veterinary Hospital to work as a vet technician to gain further valuable knowledge on the care and support to all kinds of animals. Life couldn’t have been busier as she still kept a hand in helping her dad run the family business, rehabilitating animals through her "Cougar Country", working spare moments at the Vet Hospital and looking after her own 15 cats, several birds and a dog. There was hardly any time for dating… wildlife always came first.

So it was in October, 1991 that she visited Australia to explore the rehabilitation scene in our wildlife parks. It was while she was on the Sunshine Coast visiting a friend that she decided to drop into Australia Zoo at Beerwah "just out of curiosity". A chance meeting with the man doing the Crocodile demo, Steve Irwin, was to change her life forever. A whirlwind courtship saw the couple get engaged four months later and married on the 4th June 1992 and honeymoon on location of their first television documentary.

Terri left everything she had worked so hard for in the United States all behind… her family’s business, her rehab centre, her veterinary work and all her beloved pets – but it was almost as if fate had taken a hand. From the dreams of a small child, she was to share her lifelong ideals for wildlife with the world. She quickly adapted to her new role beside Steve at the Zoo, feeding and caring for their hundreds of animals and accompanying him on his adventures into crocodile territory or the harsh outback to study snakes and goannas.

Terri Irwin is the perfect partner in this incredible daring duo of the New Millennium.