Rachael Ray: Answering Opportunity’s Call
(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)September 23, 2008 by Beth Douglas Silcox
Courtesy of the Rachael Ray Show
A dash of luck and Ray’s passion for food are the base for a deliciously successful life.
Rachael Ray, the self-deprecating cook with a dynamite personality, insists her wildly successful career is a “happy accident.”No doubt, she caught some breaks. But each time, it took Ray’s unique mix of enthusiasm, expertise, energy and diligence to grab opportunities and run with them.
She makes it look easy—sharing her all-out passion for food with millions of television viewers, readers and family cooks every day. This vivacious woman approaches every job with intensity and heartfelt enthusiasm. Her list of career titles is long: She’s the host of 30 Minute Meals on the Food Network, author of 20 cookbooks, editor-in-chief of the magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray, daytime host of syndicated TV show Rachael Ray and head of a nonprofit charity called Yum-o! All that, and she still has time for her husband and beloved dog.
Ray’s passion called her early, when the little brunette shared her grandfather’s sardines and anchovies. “I would eat what he would eat,” Ray says of her grandfather, who was a “fabulous” cook and lived with the family when she was young. She learned to love foods that would’ve grossed out her classmates.
Her mother worked long hours managing restaurants, so as a child Ray often watched her mom in action amid the restaurant hustle. As a preteen, she pitched in for pay. “I just grew up in food,” Ray says. “My brother, sister and I all grew up working in restaurants. I’m the only one who chose to do it for a living, but everyone in my family loves to cook and bake.”
Courtesy of the Rachael Ray Show
The Happiness Factor
For Ray, food and home became synonymous. Whether she was sampling her grandfather’s Italian specialties in the family kitchen or watching customers smile in her mother’s restaurants, everything about food was comfortable. “You know,” Ray says, “all my life, I’ve worked in food because it made me happy.
“I think that’s probably the key to anyone’s happiness in life—just doing what comes naturally to them,” she says. “I don’t think you can choose whether you are successful in life when you’re talking about money or status, but I do think that you can choose if you’re successful in life if you define it by simply being happy.”
Naturally, Ray pursued her happiness and love for food as a career. Some passions are difficult to discover but, Ray says, “Keep trying different things that you can envision yourself doing. If you really love clothes, there’s nothing wrong with working in clothes.” The key, she says, is to be humble and work hard. “Take any job. Don’t be a snob when it comes to work.”
From the Bottom Up
Ray believes the only way to know if you really love anything is to get into it from the ground floor. That goes for everyone, she says—graduates with five-star educations, those struggling piecemeal through community college or folks with high-school diplomas. Doing so lets you learn about every aspect of the career or company, and can help you discover what you really love doing, she says.
Whatever the job, Ray’s philosophy is to tackle it with exuberance. A diligent work ethic and enthusiasm are characteristics she credits to her mother’s example and the time spent in restaurants as a child. Those traits also allow her to thrive in a breakneck work schedule.
“Nothing ever feels like pressure if you train yourself to be a hard worker,” she says. “You get so much out of it. You feel honest at the end of the day.”
Committed to 285 episodes of television, 10 issues of Every Day with Rachael Ray and two cookbooks a year, Ray’s schedule might frazzle a less-committed worker. “Every time I feel like I can’t work harder, I have a day where I have to, and it just sort of happens,” Ray says. “It’s remarkable what your brain and body are capable of. If you really love what you do, quite honestly, it’s not that painful.”
That’s not to say she doesn’t have evenings when, overtired, she sheds a few tears. “I think I’ve always been like that,” Ray says. “I worked myself as hard when I was a bartender or a waitress or a manager at Macy’s Marketplace… because for me, there’s something kind of fun about it. There’s a sport to it.”
It’s the Little Things
Even if Ray doesn’t get home until 9 or 10 in the evening, she heads to the kitchen to make dinner. Cooking is not only her career, but also her therapy.
“To me, success has always been being able to come home and make myself dinner, to know the bills are paid, that my family’s OK today, to have my dog and to eat good food,” she says. “That’s a successful day for me.”
In the simplest terms, Ray says she wants the same things everybody else does, and it’s that “everyday” charm that draws people to her. “My mother taught me and my grandfather taught her.… You must strive to get to wherever it is you want to go, but remember that you can’t be all things to all people. So, decide who and what you are and don’t try to pretend you’re something other than that.”
So Rachael Ray is simply Rachael Ray—the girl who grew up in the Adirondacks waiting tables, tending bar and cooking with her family. Job experiences gave her expertise in gourmet foods, as well as teaching and entertaining audiences. She makes the best of her successes and struggles—
even events as unfortunate as being mugged twice in New York City.
The experience set in motion her return to the Adirondacks, which led to 30-Minute Meals and later to a series of other popular television programs, books and Every Day with Rachael Ray. “I’m so happy with where we’re at right now. I don’t think I’d even change being mugged, quite frankly,” Ray says.
In the end, the experience brought her home and led to new opportunities.
Envisioning the Possibilities
Knowing who she is and what she loves has also helped Ray grab onto opportunities—even when they were outside her comfort zone.
When a fateful call came from the Food Network seven years ago, she was sure it was a mistake. “I was scared to death and didn’t even want to go down to meet them because I thought this was ridiculous,” she says. “They don’t know I’m not a chef. I’m just teaching people how to make supper.”
But the Food Network got it—as did the boss who originally liked Ray’s idea to teach Albany’s double-income families how to cook a quick dinner instead of waiting 30 minutes for pizza. She wasn’t a chef, but it didn’t matter.
Still, Ray fretted over what she calls the “chef thing,” until she realized she had a little something in common with chefs Emeril Lagasse and Julia Child: “I’ve got an easygoing personality and I really love food, so why not me?” Ray says.
Why not her, indeed? Ray took the chance that opened, quite literally, a world of opportunities. “You have to be brave enough to close your eyes and be a bit of a visionary,” she says. She had no career map or goals on paper, but she could imagine herself doing impossible things, taking risks.
“If you’re already a happy worker and you go to work with a positive state of mind, then you really don’t have anything to be afraid of,” Ray says. “If you’re not afraid of where you’re coming from, it makes the future quite easy to navigate. The worst that can happen is that you start back at Go, and if you liked where you started, then it’s not so bad.”
Keeping It Real
No matter the project, what connects Ray to audiences is accessibility. “It’s that ‘everyman’ quality we’re shooting for,” she says. “Can everyone get these ingredients in the regular grocery store? We do travel pieces, and whether I’m in Europe or Walla Walla, Wash., we get our tips from the people who live there. You see us get lost. We do things real people do.”
Doing real things means helping real people, and Ray pursues passions that impact others’ lives, she says. She educates and feeds hungry American children through her new Yum-o! foundation, and funds the rescue of sick and injured animals through her pet food line, Nutrish.
She recognizes every circumstance—good or bad—helps shape her life and her career. “I think there’s some sort of fabric to life,” Ray says. “We might not understand something while it’s happening to us. But if we take one stitch out of the blanket, the whole quilt would fall apart. I wouldn’t change anything, even the stuff that was painful or things I didn’t understand, because it might have been the one stitch that held everything together.”
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You go girl! Goes to show with a good work ethic and determination you can live the “American Dream”. She has a wonderful personality and does not take herself too seriously. I just love watching her cooking and travel shows.