“My life has been a total accident – a very happy wonderful accident that I didn’t and couldn’t have planned.”
The fact that Rachael Ray did not know where she was going makes where she wound up today all the more impressive. Despite never working at a five-star restaurant, attending a single cooking class, or training under a revered chef, Ray has made a name for herself as one of the industry’s most successful cooks.
She is one of Food Network television’s most popular hosts, the author of numerous bestselling cookbooks, and editor-in-chief of her own magazine. More recently, Ray stepped out even farther into the limelight with her own hour-long daytime talk show, “Rachael Ray”.
So, if not from a culinary institute, where did this daytime diva get the cooking know-how that has taken her on a meteoric rise to fame?
“My life has been a total accident – a very happy wonderful accident that I didn’t and couldn’t have planned I was surrounded by all different styles of cooking and worked in the food service industry in just about every capacity you can imagine.
So I went around and asked all of my customers, ‘Why do you not cook? Why are you not buying the groceries?’ And everybody said the same thing: ‘I have no time, and it’s easier to cook the prepared meals.’
I was raised in a household that taught us that everybody has the right to have a lot of fun.
When I first heard from the Food Network, I told them that I was beer in a bottle and they are champagne. I’m too loud one day and giggle too much the next, or flub the intro, but what I do is not about technique. I need a story to go with the burger. People want to relax a little.
I did 30 Minute Meals for five years on local television, and I earned nothing the first two years. Then I earned $50 a segment. I spent more than that on gas and groceries, but I really enjoyed making the show and I loved going to a viewer’s house each week. I knew I enjoyed it, so I stuck with it even though it cost me.
My rule is that whenever I have off 36 hours or more, I go to my home upstate. I like being home. I like a cozy life. The sky is darker, the stars are brighter, and things make more sense to me when I’m in the middle of the woods.
I don’t want anything to separate me from the viewers. I open the cans, I chop the onions myself, and I wear street clothes. I don’t want people to look at what I do and think that they can’t do that too. It’s extremely important.
That’s why I don’t wear a chef’s coat. I don’t even wear an apron. At home, I wipe my hands on my coat, I burn my fingers, and it doesn’t look perfect. But it is my food. It’s the real deal….I’m happy that way.
Decide what it is that you are and then stay true to that thing. My brand is based very much on how I live my day-to-day life.”
Evan Carmichael
