The Food Network’s Original Chefs: Where Are They Now?
The Food Network’s Original Chefs: Where Are They Now?
Alexandra Schonfeld, Emily KrauserSat, October 3, 2026 at 10:15 AM UTC
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From left: Ina Garten poses for a promo photo for ‘Barefoot Contessa’; Guy Fieri attends a performance by Janelle Monáe at Spotlight in New York City on Jan. 29, 2008; Rachael Ray attends Sonya Sklaroff’s ‘A Love Letter to New York City: Solo Exhibition and Book Release’ at the Algonquin Hotel in N.Y.C. on April 7, 2022Credit: Courtesy of the Food Network; Johnny Nunez/WireImage; Craig Barritt/Getty for Sonya Sklaroff
The Food Network has been whipping up tasty, on-screen dishes for decades.
What launched in 1993 as the TV Food Network has evolved into a diverse collection of food entertainment programming and baking competition shows, with many of the network’s earliest talent going on to become some of America’s most famous chefs.
Guy Fieri has become so well known that getting his Triple D stamp of approval can bring a restaurant star status overnight. Plenty of his fellow Food Network celebrity chefs have had similar fanfare beyond the network, including Rachael Ray’s nearly 20-year stint as a syndicated daytime talk show host to Bobby Flay’s multiple restaurants.
Emeril Lagasse became one of the network’s earliest faces. He’s still in the television game because he loves teaching people about food, rather than competing with others to make dishes.
“What you see is what you get. I am what I am,” he told PEOPLE in November 2025. “I enjoy the television aspect because I like to teach. I’m not interested in competition. I’m interested in getting your attention, taking the intimidation out of that and teaching you how to cook, about ingredients, how to shop, how to pair it with wine.”
Most recently, Giada De Laurentiis — who debuted her show Everyday Italian in 2005 — joined season 35 of Dancing with the Stars.
Here’s everything to know about where the original Food Network chefs are today.
01 of 15
Bobby Flay
From left: Bobby Flay poses for a promo photo for the Food Network; Bobby Flay attends Michael Rubin’s Fanatics Super Bowl Party at the Marquee Nightclub at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on Feb. 10, 2024Credit: Food Network; Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Fanatics
Flay joined the TV enterprise in 1994, back when it was still called the TV Food Network. He was a frequent guest on the network before his first show, Grillin’ & Chillin’, premiered in 1996.
“That place has been my family for a long time,” Flay told PEOPLE in June 2023. “I love having my Food Network family because it’s my shorthand of life. They’ve let me basically bring to life my culinary dreams on TV.”
Flay has appeared on many shows since the ’90s, including Boy Meets Grill, Throwdown! with Bobby Flay and Brunch @ Bobby’s. He also competed on Iron Chef America and served as a judge and mentor on Food Network Star, Worst Cooks in America and The Next Iron Chef.
He has had four series on Food Network: Beat Bobby Flay, which launched in 2013; BBQ Brawl, which started in 2019; Bobby’s Triple Threat, which debuted in 2022; and Bobby Flay’s The Line, the newest entry, which premiered in September 2026.
The New York City native has won four Daytime Emmy Awards, penned several cookbooks and opened multiple restaurants around the country. In 2021, he ventured into the pet food business with the launch of Made by Nacho, the cat food brand named after his feline Nacho, who died in October 2023.
Flay was married three times and shares one adult daughter, Sophie Flay, with his second wife, Kate Connelly. He and fellow celebrity chef Brooke Williamson went public with their relationship in March 2025.
02 of 15
Ina Garten
From left: Ina Garten poses for a promo photo for ‘Barefoot Contessa’; Ina Garten attends the 28th annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street in N.Y.C. on May 13, 2024Credit: Food Network; Michael Loccisano/Getty
Three years after releasing her debut cookbook, 1999’s TheBarefoot Contessa Cookbook — named for her gourmet food store in the Hamptons on New York’s Long Island — Ina Garten premiered her first Food Network series, Barefoot Contessa, in 2002.
That mainstay series ran through 2021. The following year, she began hosting her latest Food Network show, Be My Guest with Ina Garten, where she welcomes an array of celebrity pals, such as Flay, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Stephen Colbert, to her East Hampton home.
Garten has authored 13 cookbooks, with a 14th, Simply Ina, set for an October 2026 release, and a memoir, 2024’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens, in which she gave fans a closer look into her personal life, specifically her decades-long marriage to her husband, Jeffrey Garten. The pair tied the knot in December 1968, five years after they began dating.
She also writes a monthly column for Food Network magazine and records a podcast from her N.Y.C. apartment called Happy Hour with Ina Garten, which debuted in September 2026.
03 of 15
Guy Fieri
From left: Guy Fieri attends a performance by Janelle Monáe at Spotlight in New York City on Jan. 29, 2008; Guy Fieri attends Imagine Dragons’ eighth annual Tyler Robinson Foundation Rise Up Gala at Resorts World Las Vegas on Sept. 23, 2022Credit: Johnny Nunez/WireImage; Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Tyler Robinson Foundation
Fieri’s Food Network career began after he won The Next Food Network Star in 2006. That same year, he debuted the show Guy’s Big Bite.
Fieri has since hosted more than two dozen shows, including Guy’s Grocery Games, Tournament of Champions, and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, which began its 57th season in September 2026; in 2021, he signed an $80 million deal with the network. His newest show, Flavortown Food Fight, premiered in March 2026, and three months later, he launched a four-episode Food Network YouTube series, Guy’s Feast Club.
Off-screen, the California-raised entrepreneur also has a condiment line, Flavortown Sauces, runs the Hunt & Ryde Vineyard and co-owns Santo Tequila with former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar. He also collaborated on a pet collection with BARK in 2026 — with a little help from his dogs Smokey and Cash.
Even longer than his relationship with the network is Fieri’s marriage to his wife, Lori Fieri, whom he wed in 1995. The couple shares two sons, Hunter and Ryder, and helped raise their nephew Jules after the 2011 death of Guy’s sister Morgan.
04 of 15
Ree Drummond
From left: Ree Drummond poses for a promo photo for ‘The Pioneer Woman’; Ree Drummond visits the ‘Today’ show on Oct. 22, 2019Credit: Shane Bevel/Food Network; Tyler Essary/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
Ree Drummond began hosting The Pioneer Woman on the Food Network in 2011. The show premiered its 40th season in September 2025.
The Pioneer Woman brand has expanded exponentially since the show’s launch, inspired by Drummond’s blog of the same name, and now includes everything from clothing to kitchenware to furniture.
She and her husband, Ladd Drummond — whom she married in September 1996 — also own many businesses in their hometown of Pawhuska, Okla., including a bakery, restaurant, hotel and retail store called The Pioneer Woman Mercantile.
The Drummonds share five children: daughters Alex and Paige and sons Bryce, Jamar and Todd. They became grandparents for the first time in 2024 when Alex welcomed her first child, daughter Sofia. Alex welcomed her second child in September 2026.
That same month, Jamar was arrested on multiple drug and assault-related charges.
05 of 15
Rachael Ray
From left: Rachael Ray poses for a promo photo for ‘30-Minute Meals’; Rachael Ray attends the Nassau Paradise Island Wine & Food Festival at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas on March 13, 2026Credit: Food Network; Alexander Tamargo/Getty
Ray first stepped onto the Food Network scene in 2001 with her show 30-Minute Meals, followed by $40 a Day and Week in a Day.
Beyond the Food Network, she hosted her own syndicated daytime talk show, The Rachael Ray Show, from 2006 to 2023. Her first post-talk show series was Hulu’s Rachael Ray’s Rebuild, inspired by the loss of her upstate New York home in an August 2020 fire.
These days, Ray is as busy as ever, joking with PEOPLE in January 2024 that she’s “not really good with downtime.” Her production company, Free Food Studios, announced its partnership with A&E Network in January 2024, and she hosts the series Rachael Ray in Tuscany and the podcast I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, which has been on hiatus since December 2024.
In addition to her shows, Ray has a cookware line, pet food brand Nutrish and cookbooks. In January 2024, she received the Golden Heart Award from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for her humanitarian work.
In September 2005, Ray married John Cusimano in Italy after meeting at a mutual friend’s party four years prior. They have homes in Italy and New York (both an apartment in N.Y.C. and a home upstate in Lake Luzerne), with Ray telling PEOPLE in October 2025 that they “work in both places,” with Cusimano spending “a lot of time” stateside and she “as much time as I can” in Italy.
06 of 15
Giada De Laurentiis
From left: Giada De Laurentiis poses for a promo photo for ‘Giada at Home’; Giada De Laurentiis attends the ‘Ferrai’ premiere at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles on Dec. 12, 2023Credit: Food Network; JC Olivera/FilmMagic
De Laurentiis has secured her spot as one of the network’s longest-running chefs. An executive first discovered her in 2002 after reading about her and her family in Food & Wine, per the Food Network website, and her first show, Everyday Italian, premiered in 2005.
The Rome-born chef later launched Giada’s Weekend Getaways and Giada at Home and jumped into Food Network Star as a judge. Around the same time her television career took off, she began writing cookbooks; her first, released in 2005, was aptly titled Everyday Italian, and she’s since released 10 more, including 2025’s Super-Italian.
In December 2025, the Emmy-winning chef launched a YouTube series, Everyday Giada, and she joined season 35 of Dancing with the Stars in 2026, though she was voted off third.
As if that doesn’t keep her busy enough, De Laurentiis owns restaurants in Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Chicago area, and her lifestyle website, Giadzy, offers her lines of pastas and condiments.
De Laurentiis is mom to one daughter, Jade, whom she shares with ex-husband Todd Thompson. She has been dating her boyfriend, TV producer Shane Farley, since 2015.
07 of 15
David Rosengarten
From left: David Rosengarten on ‘Taste’; David Rosengarten attends Fashion’s Night Out with Van Cleef and Arpels in N.Y.C. on Sept. 10, 2010Credit: Food Network; Jonathan Ziegler/Patrick McMullan via Getty
David Rosengarten starred on one of the network’s debut shows, Taste, in the late 1990s. After writing the James Beard-winning newsletter The Rosengarten Report for several years in the 2000s, The New York Postreported in September 2014 that he was bringing it back as a print and digital product that published four times a year. However, it no longer appears to be produced.
A food journalist, Rosengarten was formerly a Forbes contributor and wrote pieces for outlets such as Food & Wine, HuffPost and The Splendid Table, and he ran Flavored Nation from 2017 to 2019. He’s also the author of several cookbooks, including Taste, It’s All American Food and the Dean & DeLuca Cookbook.
According to The New York Times, Rosengarten has been married to Constance Childs since October 1983.
08 of 15
Alton Brown
From left: Alton Brown poses for a photo for the Food Network; Alton Brown attends the premiere of ‘John Wick: Chapter 3’ at One Hanson Place in N.Y.C. on May 9, 2019Credit: Food Network; Mike Coppola/WireImage
Alton Brown first launched Good Eats on the network in 1999, which aired until 2011 before moving to the Cooking Channel for a year. He later hosted Cutthroat Kitchen andIron Chef America, and revived Good Eats for Food Network in 2019.
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In 2022, he left the Food Network to lead Netflix’s new Iron Chef series.
“I don’t really think of myself as having left a place as much as I simply crossed the street to join one of my first loves,” he told Entertainment Weekly of his departure at the time. “I had 20 pretty spectacular years at Food Network. I built a brand there. I became part of Iron Chef America there. But to be honest, if Netflix had taken a shot at Iron Chef without me, that would have broken my heart.”
In February 2025, he kicked off his farewell variety tour, Alton Brown Live: Last Bite, and released his 10th book, Food for Thought. He told PEOPLE in October 2024 that after the tour wrapped that May, he planned to “take a break maybe and disappear for a little while and see if the world misses me. If it doesn’t, oh, well, I had a good run.”
Brown tied the knot with his wife, interior designer Elizabeth Ingram, in Charleston, S.C., in September 2018, and the pair live in the Atlanta suburbs with their three dogs. He shares one adult daughter, Zoey, with his ex-wife DeAnna Brown.
09 of 15
Emeril Lagasse
From left: Emeril Lagasse poses for a photo on the set of ‘Essence of Emeril’ on Feb. 3, 1997; Emeril Lagasse attends Roku Newfront 2022 at the Press Lounge in N.Y.C. on May 3, 2022Credit: Najlah Feanny/Corbis via Getty; Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for The Roku Channel
Lagasse was one of the first to venture into celebrity chef territory. He premiered the beginner-friendly show How to Boil Water in 1993, then gained enormous popularity with The Essence of Emeril and Emeril Live — and, of course, yelling “Bam!” while cooking.
Since then, he’s appeared on shows outside the network, including Emeril’s Florida and Eat the World with Emeril Lagasse, and was a guest judge on Top ChefandTop Chef Jr. In 2022, he premiered two Roku original shows, Emeril Cooks and Emeril Tailgates.
Over the years, the Massachusetts native has opened more than 20 restaurants around the U.S., a culinary journey that began when he landed a job as the executive chef at the famous Commander’s Palace in New Orleans in 1982.
Lagasse shares two daughters, Jessica and Jillian, with his first wife, Elizabeth Kief. He later welcomed two more children, son Emeril John “E.J.” IV and daughter Meril, with his third wife, Alden Lovelace, whom he married in May 2000. Three of Lagasse’s four children have followed in his footsteps: E.J. works as the chef patron at his dad’s flagship restaurant, Emeril’s, while Jillian and Jessica have co-written cookbooks.
10 of 15
Paula Deen
From left: Paula Deen poses for a photo for the Food Network; Paula Deen attends the 11th annual Unbridled Eve Kentucky Derby Gala at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Ky., on May 3, 2024Credit: Food Network; Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Unbridled Eve
Paula Deen, who began her culinary career in 1989, released her first cookbook, The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, in 1998. Four years later, she began starring on her Food Network show, Paula’s Home Cooking, which ran via broadcast and syndication until 2012. She also hosted the shows Paula’s Party and Paula’s Best Dishes.
She was fired from the Food Network in June 2013 as a result of her admission to using a racial slur in a sworn deposition, per The New York Times. Two months later, a federal judge in Georgia dismissed the lawsuit after the parties reached a settlement.
The “Queen of Southern Cuisine” lost a slew of partnerships after the initial news. However, she later appeared as a contestant on season 21 of Dancing with the Starsin 2015 and returned to cooking TV with RFD-TV’s Positively Paula in 2016.
She’s continued to release cookbooks, including 2023’s Love & Best Dishes; publish her magazine Cooking with Paula Deen, which launched in 2005; and post daily videos on YouTube. She was also the subject of the documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025.
In August 2025, Deen announced the abrupt closure of two of her restaurants, The Lady & Sons and The Chicken Box. She and her two sons, Jamie and Bobby, whom she shares with her first husband, Jimmy Deen, still run four Paula Deen’s Family Kitchens in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Missouri, according to a statement she released at the time.
Deen has been married to former tugboat captain and harbor pilot Michael Groover since March 2004.
11 of 15
Duff Goldman
From left: Duff Goldman poses for a promo photo for ‘Ace of Cakes’; Duff Goldman attends the sixth annual Critics’ Choice Real TV Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza in L.A. on June 15, 2024Credit: Food Network; Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association
Duff Goldman sweetened up the Food Network in 2006 with the premiere of his show Ace of Cakes, filmed at his Baltimore shop Charm City Cakes.
The show aired for 10 seasons, and the famed pastry chef has since appeared on series like Holiday Baking Championship, Spring Baking Championship, Kids Baking Championship andBuddy vs. Duff. His latest Food Network shows are Super Mega Cakes, which launched in June 2025, and The Ultimate Baking Championship, which premiered in March 2026.
The Michigan-born TV personality showed off his talents outside of the kitchen when he competed as McTerrier on The Masked Singerin 2022 andventured away from sweets by opening his first restaurant, Duff’s Deli + Market, at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in December 2025.
He’s also released three cookbooks, including two for kids, and the 2009 behind-the-scenes tome Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes.
Goldman wed Johnna Goldman in January 2019. They’ve since welcomed two children: daughter Josephine and son Samurai Jack.
12 of 15
Mario Batali
From left: Mario Batali poses for a photo for the Food Network; Mario Batali attends ‘Passion Play: How Jessica Alba and Mario Batali Created Multichannel Marvels’ during the ‘Fast Company’ Innovation Festival at the 92nd Street Y in N.Y.C. on Oct. 25, 2017Credit: Food Network; Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Fast Company
Mario Batali’s Molto Mario aired from 1997 to 2005, according to Variety. He was also a longtime co-host of ABC’s The Chew before stepping away from the show in December 2017 following accusations of sexual assault and harassment from multiple women.
Eater reported at the time that Batali had allegedly groped four different women and engaged in inappropriate touching over the course of two decades. Another accuser later claimed on an episode of 60 Minutes that Batali drugged and assaulted her while she was unconscious in 2005. While Batali denied the woman’s allegations in a statement, he apologized for being “deeply inappropriate” in the past.
In 2019, NYPD officials closed three sexual assault investigations involving Batali, as “the charges in two of the cases were beyond the New York State statute of limitations, which was lifted in 2006, but not made retroactive,” the department told The New York Times. The outlet explained that the third charge was dropped because of a lack of criminal evidence.
According to court documents from July 2021, following a four-year investigation by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Batali and fellow chef Joe Bastianich were ordered to pay $600,000 to 20 people who were sexually harassed while working at the pair’s restaurants after finding that their management company Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group violated state and city human rights laws.
Then in May 2022, Batali was found not guilty in a Boston court in the assault trial surrounding claims from accuser Natali Tene, who said the chef was “grabbing me in a way that I was never touched before” while posing for a selfie.
After divesting from the hospitality group and selling his minority stake in Eataly in 2019, Batali has kept a low profile. In 2023, he briefly launched an at-home cooking demo video series from his home in Northport, Mich., saying he was done with the “a--holes” in New York, per the New York Post.
13 of 15
Buddy Valastro
From left: Buddy Valastro attends Discovery Upfront at Jazz at Lincoln Center in N.Y.C. on April 2, 2009; Buddy Valastro attends the 51st annual Daytime Emmy Creative Arts & Lifestyle Awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles on June 8, 2024Credit: Amy Sussman/WireImage; Unique Nicole/Getty
Buddy Valastro’s iconic Cake Boss series debuted on TLC in 2009, two years after he appeared on Food Network Challenge in 2007.
The New Jersey native has since launched several more shows, including TLC’s Next Great Baker, Food Network’s Bake You Rich and A&E’s Legends of the Fork and Buddy Valastro’s Cake Dynasty, and competed against Goldman in Buddy vs. Duff, which ran for four seasons on Food Network.
His family’soriginal bakery, Carlo’s Bakery, has grown from its original shop in Hoboken, N.J., to multiple locations, including in N.Y.C., Las Vegas, San Antonio and Minnesota’s Mall of America.
In 2020, Valastro suffered a horrific hand injury while trying to fix his home bowling alley’s pinsetter, and he’s since had five surgeries to correct his right hand. Three years after that accident, he ventured outside of his comfort zone and made his acting debut in the 2023 Lifetime movie Yes, Chef! Christmas.
Valastro married his wife, Lisa Valastro, in October 2001. They have four kids: Sofia, Buddy Jr., Marco and Carlo.
14 of 15
Alex Guarnaschelli
From left: Alex Guarnaschelli poses for a photo for the Food Network; Alex Guarnaschelli visits SiriusXM Studios in N.Y.C. on May 29, 2024Credit: Kevin Lynch/Food Network; Michael Loccisano/Getty
Like Valastro, Alex Guarnaschelli first landed on the Food Network in 2006 when she competed on Food Network Challenge.
The New York native has since appeared on several of the network’s shows, including Chopped, Guy’s Grocery Games and The Kitchen, and secured the title of Iron Chefin 2012. She began hosting the Supermarket Stakeoutseries in 2019 and Alex vs. America in 2022.
Beyond the screen, she’s the executive chef of the N.Y.C. restaurant Butter and shares recipes on her website.
Guarnaschelli has also written five cookbooks. That includes 2023’s Cook It Up, which she co-wrote with her daughter Ava Clark, whom she shares with ex-husband Brandon Clark.
15 of 15
Anne Burrell
From left: Anne Burrell poses for a promo photo for ‘Worst Cooks in America’; Anne Burrell attends the 2025 Gala: Carnaval, presented by City Harvest, at Cipriani 42nd Street in N.Y.C. on April 22, 2025Credit: Food Network; Stephanie Augello/Variety via Getty
Anne Burrell’s first Food Network show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, premiered in 2008 and ran for nine seasons.
In 2012, she launched Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell, which ran for three seasons from June 2012 to October 2013, but she was best known for hosting the long-running Worst Cooks in America, which was one of the network’s most successful series.
She married Stuart Claxton in October 2021. The pair met on the dating app Bumble in 2018. She was a stepmother to Claxton’s son, Javier.
Burrell died on June 17, 2025, at the age of 55.
“Anne was a beloved wife, sister, daughter, stepmother, and friend — her smile lit up every room she entered,” her family said in a statement. “Anne’s light radiated far beyond those she knew, touching millions across the world. Though she is no longer with us, her warmth, spirit, and boundless love remain eternal.”
Five weeks later, the N.Y.C. medical examiner’s office confirmed that Burrell had died by suicide.
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