Rachael Ray In My Life

According to Rachael Ray, she grew up in food. "My first vivid memory is watching my 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 Rachael, who insists that cooking is a way of life she was simply born into. "Everyone on both sides of my family cooks."

Rachael has parlayed that birthright into a wildly successful career as an iconic Food Network television personality, bestselling cookbook author and editor–in-chief of her own lifestyle magazine. In the fall of 2007, she launched a hugely successful syndicated daytime program, Rachael Ray.

Showcasing Rachael 's warmth, energy and boundless curiosity, the show — produced by CBS Television

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," Rachael says.

By her early twenties, Rachael 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, Rachael 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, Rachael decided to move back to upstate New York to manage 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