Candy Loving

Candy was Playmate of the Month for January 1979. Her pictorial was titled Playmate Perfect. She was the magazine’s 25th Anniversary Playmate

Candy was born Candis Loving on Sept. 4, 1956, in Oswego, KS. She moved to Ponca City, OK, at age 3 with her mother and four siblings. She graduated from Ponca City High School in 1974, married Ron Prather and enrolled as a journalism major at the University of Oklahoma.

In 1978, Candy was working in a dress shop and as a waitress when she saw the ad in the newspaper for Great Playmate Hunt for Playboy’s 25th-anniversary publication. At the urging of her then husband, Candy entered the contest and photographer Dwight Hooker shot the test photos of her. Seven months later the 22-year-old college student beat out more than 3,500 other models.

In 1979, following her Playmate of the Month pictorial, Candy moved to California to pursue acting and modeling. She traveled the world as the ambassador of Playboy.

By 1981, Candy reportedly realized celebrity life was not for her, so she re-enrolled at the University of Oklahoma at age 25. According to “The Playmate Book: Five Decades of Centerfolds,” Candy used the money from her pictorials and five years of doing promotions for Playboy to finance a bachelor’s degree in journalism and graduate studies in human relations.

She continued to perform publicity duties for Playboy during her studies and after.

The Playboy life had taken its toll on her marriage. She dated a player from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dave Reavis, after they met while judging a beauty pageant. She moved to Tampa in 1984 and got an entry-level sales job that paid $17,000 a year. Even though her relationship with Reavis didn’t last, she remained in Southern Florida, working in the healthcare industry designing benefit packages for companies.

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