Rachael Ray

Rachael Domenica Ray was born on August 25, 1968, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her parents owned and operated a chain of family restaurants. Rachael's parents divorced when she was 13, and her mother took a job as a food supervisor in upstate New York. Rachael attended high school in Lake George, New York, a small town in the Adirondack Mountains, where she was a cheerleader and worked part-time as a waitress for her mother. Before graduating in 1986, Rachael was already an entrepreneur, running her own gift basket service on the side.
In 1993, after graduating from college, Rachael returned to Lake George and rented a cabin. However, she moved to New York City two years later due to a lack of opportunities back home. She got a job at the Macy's Marketplace candy counter, and was soon promoted to manager of the Fresh Foods department. She was able to learn a lot about gourmet foods, and she used that knowledge to help open and manage Agata & Valentina, a prestigious New York gourmet marketplace. But following bad personal experiences in the city, including a breakup and a mugging, Rachael moved back to Lake George in 1997.

Rachael landed a job as a buyer and cook at Cowan & Lobel in nearby Albany, New York. As a holiday promotion, she started to teach a class on how to prepare meals in half an hour. They were such a hit that the local media ran a story on her, and the following week, Albany's CBS affiliate approached Rachael about doing a weekly segment for the evening news called "30-Minute Meals." In its first year, the show was nominated for two regional Emmys, and in 1998, Rachael published a cookbook, which sold 10,000 copies locally. Meanwhile, Rachael continued to cook on local TV and radio shows.