Rachael Ray
American cook, television host, businesswoman and author
Biography
Rachael Domenica Ray (born August 25, 1968, in Glens Falls, New York) is an American cook, television host, businesswoman and author. Her name is linked to the quick, home-style cooking that became a staple of cable television and American daytime programming in the early twenty-first century. Although she has repeatedly said she is not a professional chef, her influence on the kitchen habits of millions of viewers makes her one of the most visible figures in American food culture of her era.
She is the daughter of Elsa Providenza Scuderi and James Claude Ray. Her mother, of Sicilian descent, managed restaurants in the Capital District of New York, including a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Lake George, which was popular with entertainers from a nearby amusement park. The family therefore grew up close to the restaurant trade. When Ray was eight, the family moved to Lake George, where she attended high school. Her first jobs in food were modest. At Sutton's Marketplace in Queensbury she briefly worked and later offered to record commercials for the business, continuing to promote its cider donuts and grilled raisin bread.
In 1995 she moved to New York City, where she first worked at the candy counter of Macy's Marketplace and then at Agata & Valentina, a specialty foods store. Back in the Adirondacks she managed Mister Brown's Pub at The Sagamore, a hotel on Lake George, and then became a buyer at Cowan & Lobel, a gourmet market in Albany. She has said that the idea behind 30 Minute Meals came from her time at that store, where she met shoppers who were reluctant to cook.
In the early 2000s she proposed to Price Chopper Supermarkets that she hold cooking classes for shoppers and give food demonstrations in its stores. While working for the chain she wrote her first cookbook, 30 Minute Meals. The classes proved popular, and WRGB, the local CBS affiliate, asked her to appear in a weekly segment on its newscasts. Together with a public radio broadcast and the book's publication, this visibility led to a spot on the Today show and to her first Food Network contract in 2001.
Her television career was built largely around Food Network. She hosted $40 a Day for three seasons, from 2002 to 2005, travelling to various destinations and trying to eat three meals a day for $40. She hosted 30 Minute Meals for eleven seasons, from 2001 to 2012, and the series returned in a revival from 2019. She also made Rachael's Vacation, a five-part food travelogue shot in several European countries, which premiered in January 2008, and Rachael Ray's Week in a Day, a 2010 cooking reality series. In January 2012 she and the chef Guy Fieri were team captains in the reality competition Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off.
In 2005 she signed a deal to host a syndicated daytime talk and lifestyle show, The Rachael Ray Show, which premiered on September 18, 2006, and aired until May 24, 2023. Recurring appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show helped fuel its launch. In 2023 she announced that the show would end after its seventeenth season and that she would launch her production company, Free Food Studios. In 2024 she played herself in the final episode of the series The Curse.
Her style centres on simple, quick cooking. She teaches many recipes that, she says, can be completed in thirty minutes or less, although critics argue that this does not include preparation time. In response to such objections, Ray has said she has no formal training and does not consider herself a chef. Her on-screen vocabulary has also caught on with audiences, with catchphrases such as «E-V-O-O» for extra-virgin olive oil, «yum-o», «G.B.» (garbage bowl) and «entréetizer» for an appetizer the size of a main course. In 2007 the Oxford American College Dictionary added the term EVOO, which she had helped popularize and to which she is credited as having coined the phrase. Hamburgers are one of her specialties, and she devoted a book to them, The Book of Burger.
Beyond television, the magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray was launched in 2005, initially published by The Reader's Digest Association and acquired by Meredith Corporation in 2011. She has also endorsed products ranging from crackers and bedding to kitchenware and coffee, and in 2008 her company introduced a pet food line based on recipes she had developed for her own dog. Proceeds from those products go to Rachael's Rescue, a charity she founded to help animals at risk.
In 2006 she founded Yum-O!, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to help families develop healthy relationships with food by teaching them to cook, feeding hungry children and funding cooking education. After Russia invaded Ukraine, she supported the Unbroken National Rehabilitation Center in Lviv with food and child-focused programmes.
Her legacy is debated. Supporters credit her with bringing cooking to people who had never done it; critics argue that she oversimplified the craft and the time it actually takes. Her books, programmes and phrases remain a reference point for American home cooking in the last two decades. In her private life she married John M. Cusimano in Montalcino, Tuscany, on September 24, 2005. Her main residence in Lake Luzerne was destroyed by fire on August 9, 2020, and she and her family were confirmed safe.
Key contributions
- 30 Minute Meals, the quick-recipe concept that gave its name to her show and several books, and remains her signature.
- The syndicated daytime program The Rachael Ray Show (2006-2023), a blend of talk and lifestyle that placed her at the centre of daytime television.
- The vocabulary of television cooking, with terms such as EVOO, yum-o and «entréetizer», which entered dictionaries and everyday speech.
- The Book of Burger, devoted to hamburgers, one of her specialties.
- Yum-O!, a nonprofit focused on family cooking education and child nutrition.