How Backstreet Boys' Howie D Became a Space Coast Local
Howie Dorough, the Backstreet Boy known to millions of fans as Howie D, didn’t grow up on the Space Coast. He grew up in Orlando, where the Backstreet Boys formed in 1993 and launched one of the biggest runs in pop history. But somewhere along the way, he did what a lot of us have done. He looked at Brevard County and decided this was home.
Today he’s a Cocoa Beach local, a restaurant owner, and a developer reshaping a stretch of the oceanfront. The kid from Orlando became a Space Coast fixture, and that second act is its own kind of story.
From Orlando to the best-selling boy band of all time
Howard Dwaine Dorough was born in Orlando on August 22, 1973, the youngest of five kids. He was a shy child who found himself on stage early, singing and dancing and acting his way through local productions. In 1993, still a teenager at heart, he helped found the Backstreet Boys in Orlando.
What happened next barely needs recapping. Hits like “I Want It That Way,” the Millennium album, and a level of global fame that made the Backstreet Boys the best-selling boy band of all time, with more than 100 million records sold. Howie’s harmonies are stitched into a decade of pop radio. Decades later the group is still going, having played a splashy residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Why a Backstreet Boy chose Brevard
Here’s the part most fans don’t know. While the touring never stopped, Howie and his older brother John quietly became Brevard County businessmen.
The two have been investing in Space Coast real estate for years, and they didn’t just buy in. They built. Their real estate firm developed the “Flores” line of luxury oceanfront condominiums in Cape Canaveral and Satellite Beach, high-end projects aimed at buyers who wanted the beach without leaving the Space Coast. By every account, the brothers came to genuinely embrace the region as residents, not just as an investment on a spreadsheet.
That’s a familiar arc around here. Plenty of the people who love this coast most weren’t born on it. They found it, planted roots, and gave something back. It’s the same thread we pull on in Preserving Family Stories on Florida’s Space Coast: a place is made as much by the people who choose it as by the ones born into it.
The Surf and Coa: a Cocoa Beach second act
In March 2025, Howie’s Space Coast chapter got a landmark. He and John opened The Surf, a five-story oceanfront condo complex in Cocoa Beach with 25 high-end residences and a second-story pool deck. The condos sold out.
Tucked inside The Surf is the venture Howie had been dreaming about for years: a restaurant. Coa serves modern American food with global influences pulled straight from a life spent touring the world, and its sister spot, Coa Lounge, bills itself as a “Floridaterranean” cocktail bar. Howie has said a food travel show was always in the back of his mind, and that opening a restaurant felt like a natural next step. For a guy who’s eaten his way across the planet, Cocoa Beach got the upgrade.
The Space Coast is built on people who chose it
It would be easy to file Howie D under “celebrity who happens to live here.” But his story is a little more interesting than that, because he didn’t inherit the Space Coast. He picked it, invested in it, and is building things that will outlast the tour dates.
That’s a story worth telling, and it’s the kind we love. At Space Coast Stories, our own roots here are transplanted too, which is maybe why we notice this pattern so often. Some of the best Space Coast lives belong to people who arrived from somewhere else and decided to stay.
Everyone who’s made this coast their home has a version of that story, the how-we-got-here and the why-we-stayed. Most of them will never open a beachfront restaurant, but their stories deserve to be kept just the same. If there’s a chapter like that in your family, we’d love to help you record it.
For more famous names with Space Coast ties, from surfers to astronauts to rock legends, browse our famous people from Florida’s Space Coast roundup.
