Heidi Van Pelt is best known as a Kansas City vegan chef and the former wife of Home Improvement actor Taran Noah Smith, and that mix of food and a 2001 marriage is most of what the public record holds. Anyone asking who is Heidi Van Pelt will find a restaurant owner with local press coverage, plus pages describing a Portland chef, a fashion designer and a film producer who isn’t her. Searches for Heidi Van Pelt age and Heidi Van Pelt net worth return confident answers, but no solid source stands behind them. The Heidi Van Pelt Taran Noah Smith link is real; most of what’s been built on top of it isn’t.
People search her name because Smith played Mark Taylor on one of the biggest sitcoms of the 1990s, and because their marriage, when he was 17, drew tabloid attention. A vegan cheese company, a lawsuit and a restaurant closure added to the story. Meanwhile, a crowd of low-quality pages has filled the gaps with four different birth years, invented careers and quotes nobody can trace. I read through all of it so you don’t have to.
This article keeps to what a named source supports. It leaves out guesses about her private life, it leaves out accusations that no record backs up, and it leaves out any details about her child. Where something isn’t confirmed, I say so in plain words.
Heidi Van Pelt Quick Facts
| Topic | Available Information |
| Full Name | Heidi Van Pelt, also written Heidi Van Pelt-Belle |
| Known For | Vegan chef and restaurateur; former wife of actor Taran Noah Smith |
| Marriage | April 27, 2001, according to Wikipedia and IMDb |
| End of Marriage | February 2007, according to IMDb; Wikipedia lists the divorce as 2007 |
| Age Difference | About 16 years older than Smith, who was 17 at the wedding |
| Hometown | Kansas City, according to The Pitch |
| Business | Playfood (vegan cheese company) and Füd (vegan restaurant, Kansas City) |
| Birth Date | Not publicly confirmed |
| Age | About 57 or 58, based on being 32 at the 2001 wedding |
| Net Worth | Not publicly confirmed |
| Verified Social Media | Not publicly confirmed |
That table has a few blank answers, and that’s the honest picture. I’d rather leave a cell empty than fill it with a number that one site copied from another.
Who Is Heidi Van Pelt?
Heidi Van Pelt is an American vegan chef and restaurant owner from Kansas City who married actor Taran Noah Smith in 2001. The Pitch, a Kansas City weekly, described her as the chef-owner of Füd, a vegan restaurant on the city’s West Side, and said she moved back to Kansas City in 2005. FOX 4 Kansas City quoted her in a segment about vegetarian dining.
That makes her better documented than many people in this series, because local reporters covered her business for years. What I couldn’t find is an interview about her private life. The Pitch covered a 2007 dispute over her cashew-cheese company and later her restaurant, but none of it reads like a personal profile.
The name attracts a lot of invented material. Pages say she’s a Portland chef who opened a restaurant called Earth to Table, a film producer who founded Emergent Films, or a fashion designer with a clothing line. I found no named source for any of it, and none fits the Kansas City record.
Why Is Heidi Van Pelt Famous?
Heidi Van Pelt is famous mainly because of her marriage to Taran Noah Smith, and secondarily because of her vegan food businesses. Her restaurant gave her a small local reputation. Her marriage gave her a national one.
Smith was born on April 8, 1984, in San Francisco, according to IMDb. He played Mark Taylor, the youngest son, on Home Improvement for 201 episodes between 1991 and 1999, and won two Young Artist Awards for the role. Wikipedia now describes him as an American businessman and former actor.
Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith’s Marriage
Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith married on April 27, 2001, according to Wikipedia and IMDb. Wikipedia says Smith was 17 at the time, and IMDb’s trivia section says his wife is 16 years older. The Pitch states the ages as 32 and 17. Several pages say the wedding took place in Topeka, Kansas, but I couldn’t verify that in a named source.
Pages give different accounts of how and when they met, with some placing it as early as 1998. None of those accounts comes from a source I’d trust, and I haven’t repeated them. The sources I’d rely on describe the marriage and the business dispute, not the early relationship.
Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith’s Divorce
The marriage ended in 2007. IMDb lists the end date as February 2, 2007, and some pages say the divorce was filed that day. Wikipedia gives the divorce year as 2007 without a date. The Pitch says the relationship went south in 2005, when she returned to Kansas City.
The split came with a legal fight. IMDb’s trivia says Smith filed a lawsuit and sought a temporary injunction in February 2007, accusing his former wife and business partner of channeling funds from their company, Playfood Inc., into her own business, Playfood Manufacturing LLC. That’s an allegation he made, not a finding. I found no reliable report of how the case ended.
Scraped pages add accusations each side supposedly made. None cites a record, so I haven’t repeated them.
Does Heidi Van Pelt Have Children?
The couple had no children together, according to several pages, and I found no contradicting source. The Pitch later reported that she and her second husband, Jerimiah Rozzo-Belle, had a young child.
I’m not naming or describing that child. Details about children don’t belong in a biography of a private adult, and I’d treat pages that publish them with suspicion.
Heidi Van Pelt’s Profession and Career
Heidi Van Pelt is a vegan chef and restaurateur, according to The Pitch. She started an underground dining club after returning to Kansas City in 2005, then served food at a downtown farmers market for about four months. In October 2009 she and Rozzo-Belle took over the former Sun Ray Cafe space at 813 W. 17th St. and opened Füd. A local newspaper column dates the restaurant to 2010, so the exact opening varies by source.
Her signature dish was a raw taco made from wild rice, avocado and goji cashew cheese, according to The Pitch. She told FOX 4 that she’d been vegan for 18 years and had found the Midwest hard going at first. Sources disagree on when her vegan cheese company, Playfood, began; pages say 2003 and 2005.
The Pitch later reported that Füd had closed after about seven years amid disputes involving staff and her business partnership, and that she expected to reopen. I found no confirmation of a reopening. If one turns up, this section will change.
Heidi Van Pelt’s Age and Birthplace
Heidi Van Pelt’s exact birth date is not publicly confirmed. The Pitch says she was 32 at the April 2001 wedding, which puts her birth between late April 1968 and April 1969, so she’s about 57 or 58 as of October 2026. Several pages give July 11, 1968, which fits that window, but none shows a source.
Pages also say she was born in Missouri, and The Pitch says she grew up in Kansas City, which is consistent. Exact birthplace is not publicly confirmed.
Other dates can’t be right. Pages say 1976, 1982 and 1985, and one says March 15, 1985, in Portland, Oregon. A woman born in 1985 couldn’t be 16 years older than a man born in 1984. When a single name collects that many birthdays, treat all of them with caution.
Heidi Van Pelt’s Net Worth
Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth is not publicly confirmed. There’s no filing, interview or business record that states a figure.
Several pages say she grew wealthy through her marriage, and some point to a trust fund Smith had from his acting earnings. That fund was in his name, and claims about what happened to it come from pages without sources.
If you see a dollar figure next to her name, ask where it came from. I couldn’t find a sourced one.
Where Is Heidi Van Pelt Now?
Where Heidi Van Pelt lives now is not publicly confirmed, and neither is her current work. The most recent reliable trail I found is The Pitch’s report on Füd’s closure and her plan to reopen. I couldn’t find a newer news report, interview or verified account.
If she shares an update herself, that would outweigh everything here.
Rumours and Mistakes About Heidi Van Pelt
Several mistakes keep recurring, so here they are in one place.
First, the wrong careers: the Portland restaurateur, the fashion designer and the film producer. Second, the birth dates, which I covered above. Third, the claim that she appeared on Home Improvement. She didn’t; her only link to the show is her marriage to its former child star.
Fourth, the “gold digger” label, which no record I found supports. These pages are written for search engines, not for readers, and they contain very little verifiable detail about the woman herself.
Why Heidi Van Pelt Stays Out of the Spotlight
Heidi Van Pelt has been public about her restaurant and quiet about her personal life. She gave interviews about Füd and vegan cooking, but I found no interview about the marriage, the lawsuit or her family. Pages that comment on it say she stepped away from the national spotlight after the divorce, and that fits what I found.
I’d add a human point. She didn’t sign up for a lasting biography because a tabloid story ran twenty-five years ago. Plenty of people in her position keep the personal side private, and that’s reasonable.
It also explains the search results. When a private person doesn’t supply material, thin websites make some up. The less there is to find, the more the invented stuff ranks.
Separating Facts From Myths About Heidi Van Pelt
Reasonably well-supported: Heidi Van Pelt married Taran Noah Smith on April 27, 2001, when he was 17 and she was about 16 years older. The marriage ended in 2007. She moved back to Kansas City in 2005 and later opened Füd, a vegan restaurant, with her second husband, according to The Pitch.
Weakly supported or unconfirmed: her exact birth date, her birthplace, the Topeka wedding, when and how the couple met, the exact start of Playfood, the outcome of the 2007 lawsuit, whether Füd reopened, where she lives and whether she has any verified social media account. Each of these rests on a single page or on nothing at all.
Not supported at all: the Portland restaurant, the film company, the fashion label, the 1976, 1982 and 1985 birth years, any net worth figure, the idea that she appeared on Home Improvement, and the accusations scraped pages attribute to either side. No named source backs any of them.
A Timeline of Heidi Van Pelt’s Publicly Known Story
About 1968: Heidi Van Pelt is born, based on The Pitch’s report that she was 32 in April 2001. The exact date isn’t confirmed.
April 27, 2001: She marries Taran Noah Smith, who is 17, according to Wikipedia and IMDb.
2005: The relationship breaks down and she returns to Kansas City, according to The Pitch. She starts a raw-vegan underground dining club.
February 2007: IMDb lists the end of the marriage on February 2 and notes that Smith files a lawsuit over Playfood funds around the same time.
October 2009: She and her second husband take over the former Sun Ray Cafe space for Füd, according to The Pitch. A local column dates the opening to 2010.
Several years later: The Pitch reports that Füd has closed after about seven years, with disputes involving staff and her partner, and that she plans to reopen. I couldn’t confirm the exact date.
October 2026: I found no verified new information about Heidi Van Pelt.
Why People Keep Searching for Heidi Van Pelt
Search engines tend to suggest words like “age”, “net worth”, “husband” and “now” beside the name of anyone linked to a celebrity, and people click them out of simple curiosity. A woman tied to a famous child-star story is a perfect target for that habit.
Home Improvement keeps the question alive. The show still draws new viewers, and the cast’s later lives are a steady topic.
Then there’s the vacuum. With nothing official to quote about her private life, the same few sentences get rewritten a hundred times, and each rewrite looks a little more certain than the last. That’s how one line in a cast biography turns into a “life story”.
Heidi Van Pelt in 2026
As of October 29, 2026, there’s no verified news about Heidi Van Pelt. If The Pitch’s reporting on her age is right, she’s about 57 or 58. She doesn’t appear in the headlines, and nothing I found suggests she wants to.
If she ever chooses to speak, an interview or a statement from her would outweigh everything on this page. Until then, the careful approach is the only fair one: report the marriage and the business, mark the gaps, and don’t fill them with fiction.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Heidi Van Pelt
Who is Heidi Van Pelt?
Heidi Van Pelt is a Kansas City vegan chef and restaurant owner, and the former wife of Home Improvement actor Taran Noah Smith. They married on April 27, 2001, and the marriage ended in 2007.
How old is Heidi Van Pelt?
Her exact age is not publicly confirmed. The Pitch says she was 32 when she married in April 2001, so she is about 57 or 58 in October 2026. Pages that give 1976 or 1985 can’t be right.
What is Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth?
Heidi Van Pelt’s net worth is not publicly confirmed. No filing, interview or business record gives a figure, and the trust fund pages mention was in Smith’s name, not hers.
Why did Heidi Van Pelt and Taran Noah Smith divorce?
The reasons haven’t been made public by either side. IMDb notes that Smith filed a lawsuit in February 2007 accusing her of moving Playfood funds into another company. That’s an allegation, and I found no report of the outcome.
What is Heidi Van Pelt known for today?
She is known for Füd, the vegan restaurant she opened in Kansas City around 2009 or 2010, and for Playfood. The Pitch later reported that Füd had closed, and I couldn’t confirm that it reopened.
Heidi Van Pelt’s public story is short: a 2001 marriage that made tabloid headlines, a vegan food business, a restaurant in Kansas City and a long stretch of quiet. Everything beyond that is either unconfirmed or wrong. Knowing where the record stops is more useful than a page that pretends it doesn’t.