Dan's Papers - March 14, 2008 - Rachael Ray

For a sweet woman from upstate New York, Rachael Ray stirs up a lot more than her "you won't be single for long" vodka sauce. When you Google her name, you'll find as many sites devoted to her demise as those in praise of the celebrity chef. It must be the intrigue of a woman who seems as down home as a warm apple pie heating up to superstar status, seemingly overnight.

Ray was born in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1968, and grew up in Lake George, New York. Her family is of Italian-American heritage, originally from Sicily, and a love of food was infused into her childhood. Her grandfather on her mother's side fed his family of 12 by growing and cooking everything himself. Her father's family cooked with Louisiana flair, so Ray's cooking style was bound to be passionate.

She describes her first memory as "watching Mom in a restaurant kitchen. She was flipping something with a spatula. I tried to copy her but ended up grilling my right thumb. I was three or four."

Her parents owned several restaurants in Cape Cod before they relocated to upstate New York. It seemed food was a part of her destiny from the start.

"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 states on her website. After an adolescence in which she worked many aspects of the food industry, she developed the same desire as many young people tumbling towards adulthood - the desire to spread her wings.

She left her small town life behind and headed to Manhattan, where the food industry opened up for her. She started at the candy counter at Macy's, and moved up through the ranks there until she was manager of the fresh foods department. According to Ray, her two years at Macy's established her foundation in gourmet foods. From there, she moved to the prestigious marketplace Agata and Valentina, where she was a buyer and manager.

Even though New York offers one of the best platforms for an aspiring foodie, Ray seemed to be a small-town girl at heart. She left the big city lights, but little did she know that small-town living would not offer her a life out of the spotlight. While managing restaurants and pubs in upstate New York, a large gourmet market, Cowan and Lowell in Albany, recruited Ray, first to be their buyer and then their chef. While working for this market, Ray thought it would be beneficial to offer a series of cooking classes. Her classes, including "30-Minute Mediterranean Meals," were extremely popular and picked up by a local television station. She started doing a weekly cooking segment on the evening news, and released a book to accompany it. The wild success of these endeavors launched Ray into the fast lane. Now she has become a staple of the Food Network, hosting the shows "Tasty Travels," "$40 a Day," "Inside Dish" and "30 Minute Meals."

One reason Ray has gained such prominence is that she just seems so real. Fans feel like they know her personally. Part of this persona has developed because of her generous use of catch phrases such as "yum-o," "Oh my Gravy!" and "How good is THAT?" She's constantly raving about her own recipes, sounding more like a high school kid than a professional chef - "That smells awesome!" is one of her classics. Critics sometimes call her unprofessional, but that is exactly why viewers feel they could really be sitting in the kitchen with a friend, and it makes her so attractive to so many. To the critics, she simply says, "I have no formal anything. I'm completely unqualified for any job I've ever had."

Ray's attractiveness spiraled her beyond the foodie zone when she was asked to model for FHM Magazine in 2003. The notorious pictures sparked online forums to debate extensively her reasons for posing in skimpy clothes, taking seductive bites of strawberries and enticing licks from a chocolate covered spoon. But when people judged her harshly on the pictures, she had her usual casual sweetness. "I think it's cool for someone who is goofy and a cook, just a normal person to be thought of in that way," she shrugged in response.

She may maintain her down-to-earth charm, but once you hit the limelight, it's only a matter of time before you make your way to the Hamptons. You can't avoid it, no matter how "upstate" your mindset is. Ray and her husband, John Cusimano, rented out here before they started looking to buy. And now it looks like they plan on spending summers out here for quite some time. They recently purchased a house on Tuckahoe Lane in Southampton.

Ray has said, "My life has been a total accident - a very happy, wonderful accident that I didn't and couldn't have planned." As she makes a home for herself here in the land of starlets and farmers, she's sure to face the same mix of fans and foes. But as long as she maintains her breezy outlook on the critics, Rachael Ray should be just fine.