Things You Didn't Know About Your Favorite Food Network Stars

If you're a longtime fan of the Food Network and its sister Cooking Channel, then some of its biggest stars can feel like old friends. But even if you've seen them host cooking shows, judge dishes on "Chopped" or travel around the country visiting funky restaurants for years, we bet that there's still a lot you don't know about these familiar faces.

Rachael Ray moved to New York City in 1995 and worked at the candy counter at Macy's as well as specialty food store Agata & Valentina before becoming a buyer for a gourmet shop in Albany. She signed her first contract with Food Network in 2001, and since then she's written 27 cookbooks, launch a syndicated daytime talk show and picked up three Daytime Emmys. Ray, who brought back a reinvented version of "30 Minute Meals" to Food Network in 2019, has a vinyl record collection of about 2,000 records, according to E! News. Ray also knows how to celebrate in style. According to People, she and her husband John Cusimano fly 100 friends and family members to Italy for their anniversary every year.

Ina Garten was a budget analyst for the federal government's Office of Management and Budget during the Ford and Carter administrations, and in her spare time she cooked for friends and "flipped" D.C. houses, turning a tidy profit. She left her government job in 1978 to purchase a specialty food store (which happened to be called Barefoot Contessa) that became incredibly successful. In 1985, she moved it to the Hamptons, and it attracted a client roster that included many celebrities. After the shop closed in 2004, Garten turned to writing cookbooks, which led to guest appearances on Martha Stewart's cooking show and then led to Food Network offering her a show of her own. She told Vanity Fair that the two things she most dislikes are "passive-aggressive people and cilantro."

Irvine enlisted in the Royal Navy at age 15 and received enough culinary training while there to score a job cooking aboard Her Majesty's royal yacht Britannia, which lasted 10 years. He then served as a restaurant consultant in Asia before becoming executive chef for several cruise ships. In 2007, he published his first cookbook, "Mission: Cook!," and later that year his first show, "Dinner: Impossible," was picked up by Food Network after Irvine shot a pilot with Marc Summers' production company. He hosted a daytime talk show, "The Robert Irvine Show," on The CW from 2016 to 2018, and he's been very active in giving back to the military.

Tyler Florence began working in restaurants at his native Greenville, South Carolina, at the age of 15, and he graduated from Johnson & Wales University in 1991. He then moved to New York City, where he got jobs working in kitchens including Charlie Palmer's Aureole, and in 1998, he struck out on his own, becoming head chef at Cibo before opening Cafeteria in Chelsea. The success of these restaurants led to appearances on Food Network's "How to Boil Water," and the following year he got his own show, "Food 911." His San Francisco restaurant, Wayfare Tavern, is wildly successful, but not everything he touches turns to gold. A Napa partnership with rocker Sammy Hagar called Rotisserie & Wine shut down in 2012 after just one year in business.

Chicago native Jeff Mauro rose to fame as the winner of the seventh season of "Food Network Star," and since then has hosted his own show, "Sandwich King" and co-hosts "The Kitchen." He was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for "Sandwich King" but lost to Bobby Flay. Beyond his TV gigs, he also owns Chicago-based fast-casual sandwich concept Pork & Mindy's.

Born Jeffrey Goldman in 1974 (his little brother pronounced his first name "Duffy," hence the nickname), Duff Goldman grew up in McLean, Virginia, and Cape Cod. In college, he applied for a job at Baltimore restaurant Charleston (one of the 101 best restaurants in America), and was hired to bake cornbread and biscuits, which inspired him to open a cake shop, Charm City Cakes, in 2000. Today he lives in Los Angeles, and between gigs hosting shows including "Kids Baking Championship," he plays bass in a band called Foigrock.

Bertinelli has been a TV fixture since 1975, when she was cast by producer Norman Lear in the role of Barbara Cooper on the show "One Day at a Time" at the age of 15. Since then, she's appeared in more than two dozen TV movies and had runs on "Touched by an Angel" and TV Land's "Hot in Cleveland," and was also married to rocker Eddie Van Halen from 1991 to 2007. On Food Network, she hosts Valerie's Home Cooking (which won her two Daytime Emmy Awards in 2019), Kids Baking Championship and Family Food Showdown, and she earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012. She's also written two health-focused books, "Losing It" and "Finding It."

Alex Guarnaschelli is the daughter of famed cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, and her first cooking experience came in the form of watching her mother test recipes. After time cooking in New York, France and Los Angeles (including stints at New York's Daniel, Los Angeles' Patina and for chef Marc Forgione's father, Larry), she opened her own New York restaurant, Butter, which is still going strong. She first appeared on Food Network on a 2007 episode of "Iron Chef America" (she lost to Cat Cora), and in 2008 she briefly hosted a Food Network show called "The Cooking Loft."

Buddy Valastro is the owner of Hoboken, New Jersey's Carlo's Bakery, which opened in 1910 and was purchased by Valastro's father in 1964. It would have remained a popular local bakery (and Valastro would have remained relatively unknown) if not for TLC's reality series "Cake Boss," which premiered in 2009 and almost instantly created lines around the block. The surprise hit spawned new locations of Carlo's and made Buddy a household name, but he didn't cross over from TLC to Food Network until 2016, as host of "Bakers vs. Fakers."

Ann Marie "Ree" Drummond, otherwise known as the "Pioneer Woman," started blogging in May 2006 about country living, and it wasn't until a year later that she published her first recipe, a tutorial on how to cook a steak. The recipe format — step-by-step instructions, complete with 20 photos and plenty of attention to detail, caught on with readers, and by 2011 the site was attracting 23 million page views per month, according to The New Yorker. She's authored 15 books, a mix of cookbooks and children's books about a basset hound named Charlie. She made her Food Network debut on a 2010 episode of "Throwdown! With Bobby Flay," and her own series, "The Pioneer Woman," debuted the following year. Along with running her media empire, she also owns a restaurant, retail shop and eight-room hotel in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, that fans make pilgrimages to from across the country. And we bet that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things you didn't know about the Pioneer Woman.

Marc Summers is best-known to Food Network viewers as host of the long-running series "Unwrapped," but from 1986 to 1993 he became beloved to a whole generation as host of the Nickelodeon game show "Double Dare." Summers was born Marc Berkowitz, but he changed his name to avoid association with the "Son of Sam" serial killer, David Berkowitz.

Maneet Chauhan was born in Punjab, India, and moved to the U.S. to study at the Culinary Institute of America. She earned praise as the opening executive chef at a Chicago restaurant called Vermillion in 2003, and opened its New York offshoot in 2007. She also made her first Food Network appearance on "The Next Iron Chef," in the third season alongside Marco Canora, Marc Forgione and Ming Tsai, and today she's best-known as a judge on "Chopped." She's also chef-owner of Nashville's Chauhan Ale and Masala House, which has been in business since 2014.

Eagle-eyed viewers may have first spotted Anne Burrell as Mario Batali's spiky-haired sous chef on "Iron Chef America," and she too competed on "The Next Iron Chef." She first met Batali while working as sous chef at Felidia, the New York restaurant of chef (and cooking show host) Lidia Bastianich, whose son, Joe, was Batali's business partner. She's hosted shows including "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef" and "Chef Wanted With Anne Burrell," and has hosted "Worst Cooks in America" since 2010.

Lexington, Kentucky, native Damaris Phillips was born on the same day John Lennon was shot (December 8, 1980), and for that reason her parents decided to give her the middle name Lennon. She won the ninth season of "Food Network Star" in 2013, and her resulting show (called "Southern at Heart") ran for six seasons. She's been a familiar face on the network since then, popping up as a guest judge on shows including "Guy's Grocery Games," and hosting "The Bobby and Damaris Show" with Bobby Flay and "Southern and Hungry" with her brother-in-law, auto racing analyst Rutledge Wood.