Rachael Ray

Born in Cape Cod, where her family owned a number of restaurants, Rachael Ray grew up in an environment where cooking and food were a major part of her life. When she was still very young, she moved to upstate New York, where her mother worked as the food supervisor of a restaurant chain. As an adult, Ray moved to New York City, where she worked in gourmet food markets, but after a few years there, she came back to Lake George, where she had grown up, and managed the bars and restaurants at the Sagamore Resort. This led to job in a gourmet market in Albany, where, as buyer and chef, she began holding classes called "30 Minute Mediterranean Meals," which caught on so quickly that soon she was giving them weekly on a local evening news show there. By 2001 30 Minute Meals had premiered on the Food Network, followed by $40 a Day in 2002, Inside Dish in 2004, and Tasty Travels in 2005. Author of numerous cookbooks, editor-in-chief of her magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, and host of a daily talk show, Rachael Ray, Ray decided to venture into the music world with the compilations How Cool Is That Christmas, featuring some of her favorite holiday songs, and Too Cool for School: Mixtape for Kids, which included child-appropriate pop songs, in the fall of 2006.