Robyn Crawford met Houston while working as a camp counselor in New Jersey in 1980, as reported by The Washington Post. They soon developed a close bond, one that Crawford later confirmed was intimate. "We were friends. We were lovers. We were everything to each other. We weren't falling in love. We just were. We had each other. We were one: That's how it felt," she wrote in her 2019 book, "A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston."
Crawford wrote that she and Houston ended their sexual relationship as she started gaining traction as a superstar, but their friendship lasted far beyond that. For the next 20+ years, Crawford would work closely with Houston as her assistant and creative director before quitting her team in 2000, as per The BBC.
Following Houston's death in 2012, Crawford gave away some of the mementos she collected from her years with Houston to the Whitney Houston Academy of Performing Arts, including some of her gold and platinum discs.