According to Rachael Ray, she grew up in food. “My first vivid memory is watching Mom in a restaurant kitchen. She was flipping something with a spatula. I tried to copy her and ended up grilling my right thumb! I was 3 or 4” says Ray, who insists that cooking is a way of life she was simply born into “Everyone on both sides of my family cooks”. Ray has parlayed that birthright into a wildly successful career as an iconic food show host, bestselling cookbook author and editor–in-chief of her own lifestyle magazine. Growing up in a family steeped in culinary tradition, Ray was exposed to a wide range of cooking techniques, from her maternal grandfather who grew and cooked everything his family of 12 ate, to her dad’s family, which embraced the food-rich traditions of Louisiana. The Ray family owned several restaurants on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, before relocating to upstate New York, where her mother worked as the food supervisor for a restaurant chain. “I was surrounded by all different styles of cooking and worked in the food service industry in just about every capacity you can imagine”, Ray says. By her early twenties, Ray developed a hankering for city life and moved to New York where she landed at Macy’s, working first at the candy counter and then as manager of the Fresh Foods Department. She credits her two years there for giving her an education in gourmet foods. After Macy's, Ray helped open Agata & Valentina, the prestigious New York gourmet marketplace, where she was the store manager and buyer. Despite the exciting lifestyle in the foodie circles of New York City, Ray decided that wasn’t how she wanted to live long term so she moved back to upstate New York and started managing pubs and restaurants at the famed Sagamore Resort on Lake George. From there, she was recruited by Cowan & Lobel, a large gourmet market in Albany, to be their food buyer and eventually their chef. As a way to increase grocery sales during the holidays, Ray began a series of cooking classes, including a course promising to teach thirty “30-Minute Mediterranean Meals”, which exploded in popularity. The CBS station in Albany-Schenectady, WRGB-TV, discovered Ray and signed her on to do a weekly “30-Minute Meals” segment for the evening news. Nominated for two regional Emmys in its first year, the segment was a major success; a companion cookbook sold 10,000 copies locally during the holidays. With that, a franchise was born! Ray's television work grew to include a series of lifestyle and travel segments as well as a long-term relationship with the Food Network, hosting shows such as “Tasty Travels”, “ A Day”, “Inside Dish” and “30-Minute Meals”, the latter of which earned Ray a 2006 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Service Show and a nomination for Outstanding Service Show Host. In addition to her television endeavors, Rachael has turned her “30-Minute Meals” concept into a bestselling series of cookbooks, as well as a lifestyle magazine. “My life has been a total accident — a very happy, wonderful accident that I didn't and couldn't have planned”, says Ray. Despite her growing celebrity she is determined to stay grounded and hold on to her down-to-earth values. She still spends as much time as she can at her cabin in the Adirondacks with her husband, John, her family — the “research team” — and her beloved pit bull IsaBoo.
