Although her father worked as a janitor for Cadillac, he did well enough to purchase a house on Detroit's Blaine Street in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

[1] In 1958, Raynoma and her younger sister, Alice, auditioned as a duo for a young songwriter named Berry Gordy.

Gordy, who loved contractions, decided to call the group the Rayber Voices after their given names, Raynoma and Berry.

In addition to Ray, the singers in the group were Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, Sonny Sanders and later, Gwendolyn Murray [2] and Louvain Demps.

[3] Tired of the paltry royalty checks that he was receiving, Gordy was encouraged by Ray and Smokey Robinson to start his own record company.

[6] After the birth of their child, Kerry, and his divorce from his previous wife was final, Ray and Berry Gordy were married.

[7] However, with the cost of living being much higher in New York than Detroit, Ray struggled to get proper funding to maintain her office.

Against the advice of Eddie Singleton (her partner and future husband) she arranged to bootleg five thousand copies of the Motown single, "My Guy" by Mary Wells to keep the office open.