Rachael Ray Fires Back at Claims She’s ‘Disappeared,’ Describes ‘Busy’ Life

Despite what you may have seen online, Rachael Ray is very booked and busy.

When Us Weekly spoke with the renowned cook during the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival’s Burger Bash on Friday, October 17, we inquired about chefs Ray, 57, hoped to run into during the events.

“I don’t go to other people’s events,” she told Us. “I’ve got too much work to do. I did an event for Ukraine last night, I’m doing Burger Bash today, I have another huge event on Sunday. I see these guys around all the time. It’s not like I have to wait for just once a year kind of thing.”

The Emmy Award-winning TV host added even more to her plate with the recent news that her A+E Global Media deal has been expanded.

Ray’s daytime talk show ended two and a half years ago after 17 seasons, and while a recent visit to The Drew Barrymore Show reminded her there are things she misses about taping a talk show — the energy of an audience and the staff she worked with — she is grateful to feel in control in her current chapter.

“To be a woman in her 50s and still considered relevant is cool, but to have partners that want to help me produce really focused work that I want to produce and support people that I want to support is extraordinary,” she said. “People have asked me for decades, ‘Do you feel lesser than because you’re a female in your industry?’ I never felt that way once. Any time I took less money than a man, I suggested it. I said, ‘If I take less money as talent, can I get more money for staff or the location I want to work in versus the one you want me to work in?’ I love this place in my life the best right now. I feel like I really earned this. I earned this in concept, in my mind, in my heart.”

When her talk show ended, Ray launched Free Food Studios, and she made a deal with A&E Networks in 2024 where A+E acquired a 50 percent stake in her company. Rachael Ray’s Meals in Minutes and Rachael Ray in Tuscany began airing in 2024, and Meals in Minutes is now on season 3. The expanded deal includes the cooking up of 110 new episodes from Ray and other Food Studios chefs. “We have the living kitchen in two countries [Ray films in her kitchens in upstate New York and Tuscany], and we have four talents that we love to produce, and we’re adding a fifth one next year,” she explained. “I feel extremely fortunate.”

But while she’s been hard at work and going back and forth between New York and Italy, news headlines and online commenters have treated Ray like a missing person, insisting she’s gone “off the radar,” treating every public sighting like a “rare” appearance. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said about the online chatter that she “disappeared.”

Ray explained: “I work my ass off all the time. And I never left. I just switched over to A+E and new partners, that’s all. But I’ve been working constantly. From the time I left the daytime show, I started writing. I write around the clock, and I produce shows with my friends around the clock.”

She added with a laugh, “So I don’t know why people thought I left. I guess we did a crap job of promoting it.”

A scan of Ray’s socials confirms “double R” has been cranking out meals in the kitchen where fans first fell in love with her, appearing on podcasts, hitting the beach with dog Bella and frequenting food festivals like this one.

But if Instagram isn’t your thing, “everything is on YouTube, all of Free Food Studios work, my work, and all of the people that we produce, all of it is on YouTube, but it’s also on Hulu and FYI,” Ray explained. “It’s just that they rotate, one puts it up first, and then the other partner takes it, and then the other partner takes it, so it’s not a constant on each thing. But I never left. I kept working. I guess people just got lost on how to find us, but I never stopped working.”

Rachael Ray’s Meals in Minutes can be a family affair, with Ray’s husband, John Cusimano, making drinks and sister Maria Betar popping up to bake. “This is literally seeing our life, and anybody who’s in our life,” she told Us. Now she works from home “with a very tiny crew” and is able to share her “real life with people.”

And yes, you read that right above, but it bears repeating considering another source of internet curiosity — “Is Rachael Ray still married?” As evidenced by her frequent Instagram posts that feature him, Ray is still happily wed to Cusimano, 58. The couple just celebrated 20 years of marriage this September, and earlier this month she shared with Us a bit about their low-key Italian anniversary celebrations.

While she’s just as open in our interview as she’s been with her audience since her Food Network debut nearly 24 years ago, no one knows Ray better than Cusimano. This is clear when she shares an anecdote with Us about a recent night preparing to cook for a hootenanny they were hosting in their apartment. (We definitely felt a tiny, warming thrill the first time Ray referenced said “hootenanny.” By the fifth mention, we were a puddle of delight.)

“We had John and his friends doing bluegrass versions of rock ‘n’ roll songs, and I always try and make the menu based on one of our friends,” she said. “So we had fried chicken thighs on waffles with smoked cinnamon, maple syrup and jalapeño bacon, rolled hot dogs with homemade green tomato chow-chow. Charred bourbon wings with smoked blue cheese and baby farm vegetables from Ohio, from one of our shows, my friend Farmer Lee Jones. And celery micro greens on top. It was a crazy menu, and that was just for the hootenanny. And no one comes to the hootenanny, just the musicians, so it’s like 12, 14, people in our dining room. I have to sit on the stairs because there are no chairs left, and they all just play music, and they have a hootenanny and cocktails.”

Plus, there’s Ray’s menu of food, which requires her to cook for two days. So the night before the hootenanny, she had her prep work cut out for her. “And my husband said, ‘Tonight, you’re not staying in. You have to go out.’ And I said,’ John, I can’t go out. I’m making the food for the hootenanny. I gotta stay in.’ And he said, ‘You don’t understand, it’s your Christmas present.’ I said, ‘John, it’s early October. I don’t have time for Christmas.’”

Cusimano didn’t relent and directed Ray to “put on something very rock ‘n’ roll,” to which she eventually agreed, once she got the wings marinating and made the chow-chow.

“Then, I go put on something that I think he would like,” she said playfully, “and I think we’re going to Waiting for Godot, which I’ve seen a bunch of times, because the car is going to Midtown. We get out of the car because the traffic is terrible, and we decide to walk. I’m walking up the street, and I see ‘Radio City Music Hall tonight: David Byrne.’ I burst into tears. My two favorite single artists of all time were David Bowie, god rest his soul, and David Byrne. And [Byrne] blows my mind; he is just pure love. Every time I see him and all of the brilliant musicians that he chooses to work with, I always cry happy, happy tears. But when I looked up and I saw Radio City, David Byrne, I lost it, so I already had a merry Christmas.”