Heidi Van Pelt spent years as a footnote in someone else’s headline. Tabloids in the early 2000s reduced her to a single fact: she married Taran Noah Smith, the child star from Home Improvement, when he was eighteen and she was thirty-three. That sixteen-year age gap made her famous for all the wrong reasons.
But the real Heidi Van Pelt story runs much deeper than a scandalous headline. She built a vegan food company years before plant-based eating went mainstream, opened a beloved Kansas City restaurant, and later found herself at the center of a bizarre public meltdown that had nothing to do with her famous ex-husband. This article digs into her early life, her controversial marriage, her business ventures, and where she stands today.
Who Is Heidi Van Pelt?
Heidi Van Pelt is an American entrepreneur, vegan chef, and former animal rights activist best known publicly as the ex-wife of former child actor Taran Noah Smith. She built her own identity through Playfood, an early vegan cheese company, and later through Füd, a plant-based comfort-food restaurant in Kansas City. Her marriage brought her unwanted fame, but her career reveals a woman who chased her own ambitions long before and long after the cameras showed up.
Heidi Van Pelt’s Early Life and Education
Heidi Van Pelt was born on July 11, 1968, in Missouri. Her parents separated while she was still a young child, and she split her time between two households growing up. That early instability, according to people who later profiled her, pushed her toward independence at a young age.
She attended elementary school in Missouri before enrolling at Blue Springs High School. She later transferred and finished her secondary education at Oak Park High School, graduating in 1986.
Her college years followed a winding path. She enrolled at Stephens College to study fashion design but did not finish the program. She then studied German and philosophy at the University of Missouri, again without completing a degree. In 1988, she briefly attended the University of Washington, reportedly hoping to pursue a career with the Central Intelligence Agency. None of these academic chapters led to a diploma, but together they paint a picture of a restless young woman still searching for direction.
Before she became known as an entrepreneur, Van Pelt tried her hand at small-scale film production, launching a short-lived independent media venture called Emergent Films. When that business folded, she moved to Los Angeles and worked behind the scenes on film sets as a production assistant and prop handler. That Hollywood experience, though modest, put her in the same circles that would eventually connect her to Taran Noah Smith.
How Heidi Van Pelt Met Taran Noah Smith
Taran Noah Smith rose to fame playing Mark Taylor, the youngest son on Home Improvement, a role that earned him two Young Artist Awards during the show’s run from 1991 to 1999. By the time the series ended, Smith was a teenager trying to figure out what came after child stardom.
Heidi Van Pelt and Smith crossed paths in the late 1990s through mutual connections in Los Angeles, reportedly bonding over veganism, animal rights, and an interest in alternative living rather than typical Hollywood social circles. Van Pelt was already active in animal rights causes at the time, and that shared philosophy became the foundation of their relationship.
The Marriage That Shocked Hollywood
Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith married on April 27, 2001. She was thirty-three years old; he had just turned eighteen and had recently gained access to a trust fund from his Home Improvement earnings, reportedly worth well over a million dollars. The sixteen-year age gap between them became instant tabloid fodder.
Coverage at the time painted Van Pelt as an older woman who had taken advantage of a young, newly independent star. Van Pelt later pushed back against that narrative, and Smith himself rejected the idea that he lacked agency in the decision. Still, the public scrutiny never really let up, and the marriage played out largely under a media microscope that focused far more on their age difference than on anything else about their partnership.
Building Playfood: Their Vegan Business Venture
In 2005, Van Pelt and Smith co-founded Playfood, a vegan food company built around non-dairy, cashew-based cheese alternatives. They ran the operation out of their Sherman Oaks, California, home, developing plant-based sauces and dairy substitutes at a time when vegan cheese barely existed on grocery shelves.
The couple hosted underground dinners and pop-up tastings to build interest in their products, and the venture positioned them as early pioneers in a food category that would not go mainstream for another decade. Some reporting indicates the home-based manufacturing setup ran into trouble with local authorities over food safety permits, pushing the pair to pivot toward a catering operation and a vegan restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.
For a while, Playfood gave the couple a shared purpose beyond their public image. That did not last.
Divorce and the Playfood Lawsuit
Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith filed for divorce in February 2007, ending a marriage that had lasted just under six years. The split reportedly stemmed from a mix of personal differences, financial strain, and the pressure of running a small business together while under constant public attention.
The divorce quickly turned into a legal fight over Playfood itself. Smith filed a lawsuit and sought a temporary injunction against Van Pelt, accusing her of funneling money from their joint company, Playfood Inc., into a separate entity she controlled called Playfood Manufacturing LLC. The case dragged on for close to a year before Smith won full control of Playfood Inc. He went on to grow the brand into a profitable business in the years that followed, while Van Pelt exited the venture she had helped build from scratch.
The couple never had children together, despite years of speculation online.
Life After Taran Noah Smith: Vegan Chef and Restaurant Owner
After the divorce, Heidi Van Pelt returned to her home state of Missouri and quietly rebuilt her career around the thing she had always cared about most: food. She started small, running a raw-vegan pop-up stand at Bad Seed, a farmers market in Kansas City’s Crossroads district.
The pop-up caught on with local diners, and by 2010, Van Pelt had turned it into a full restaurant called Füd, located in Kansas City’s Westside neighborhood. She reportedly ran the business alongside her second husband, Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle, with whom she also had a son named Vox.
Füd built a loyal following by making vegan food approachable for people who did not consider themselves vegan at all. The menu leaned into comfort classics with a plant-based twist, including jackfruit tacos, vegan burgers, collard-wrapped sandwiches, and refined versions of her original cashew cheese. For nearly seven years, Füd was one of Kansas City’s most talked-about spots for creative, health-conscious dining, and it helped put the city on the map for vegan food long before that scene grew nationally.
The Strange Collapse of Füd in 2017
Füd’s story did not end quietly. In August 2017, according to local reporting from The Pitch, a Kansas City alt-weekly, tensions inside the restaurant boiled over after a staff dispute and an anonymous online review accused Van Pelt of making inflammatory political and social comments to employees in the kitchen.
Days later, staff arrived for their shift to find the cash register, credit card machine, and safe contents gone, with Van Pelt nowhere in sight. Her business partner and ex-husband, Rozzo-Belle, reportedly stepped in so the restaurant could open that day. By that evening, Van Pelt returned with a lawyer and a police officer and ordered the restaurant closed on the spot. She told local reporters she believed staff members were conspiring against her, though she never publicly produced evidence to support the claim. At least ten employees ultimately left the business, and Füd never reopened.
The abrupt shutdown left Kansas City’s dining community stunned and split public opinion about what had really happened behind the scenes.
Where Is Heidi Van Pelt Now?
Since Füd’s closure, Heidi Van Pelt has stayed almost entirely out of the public eye. She has avoided interviews, reality television offers, and any significant social media presence, choosing instead to live privately, reportedly still in the Missouri or greater Kansas City area. There is no confirmed record of a major public business venture since the restaurant closed.
Heidi Van Pelt’s Net Worth
Heidi Van Pelt has never publicly disclosed her net worth, and no verified figure exists for her current finances. What is clear is that her income has come from her own entrepreneurial work, not from any settlement tied to her marriage to Smith, who went on to build his own fortune by growing Playfood into a successful company after their split.
FAQs About Heidi Van Pelt
Is Heidi Van Pelt older than Taran Noah Smith?
Yes. Van Pelt was born in 1968, making her sixteen years older than Smith, who was born in 1984. The gap became a major talking point when they married in 2001.
Did Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith have children?
No. There is no verified record of children from their marriage.
What happened to Playfood after the divorce?
Taran Noah Smith won a legal battle over the company in 2007 and 2008 and retained full control of Playfood Inc., later growing it into a successful vegan food brand.
What was Füd?
Füd was a vegan comfort-food restaurant that Van Pelt opened in Kansas City’s Westside neighborhood in 2010. It closed abruptly in 2017 following internal staff disputes.
Where does Heidi Van Pelt live now?
She is believed to live privately in the Missouri or Kansas City area, away from public attention and media coverage.
Final Thoughts
Heidi Van Pelt’s story is far messier and more interesting than the “older woman, younger star” headline that first introduced her to the public. She helped pioneer vegan cheese before it had a market, built a restaurant that Kansas City still talks about, and walked away from two very public ventures on her own terms, however chaotic the exits. Whatever people make of her choices, her career shows a woman who kept building something of her own long after the tabloids stopped paying attention.