Rachael Ray Reveals the Exact Moment She Fell in Love With Her Husband

Oct 23, 2026 by apost team

The story of how Rachael Ray fell in love with her husband John Cusimano involves pasta — which, given who she is, makes complete sense.

Ray, 58, was at the New York City Wine & Food Festival’s Blue Moon Burger Bash when she told PEOPLE the moment she knew. She had recently appeared on Bert Kreischer’s “Something’s Burning” podcast, where Kreischer made homemade tortellini with carbonara sauce. Carbonara, as it happens, is Cusimano’s favorite dish. Ray brought some home.

“I asked him, ‘What do you want for dinner?’ He said, ‘Carbonara.’” She paused. “It’s bacon and egg and pasta. And I just thought that was so charming. I fell in love with John the second he said carbonara.”

She then described their daily life in a single run-on sentence of extraordinary specificity. “I make food, he writes music, we watch news or movies, we fall asleep, he snores, I nudge him, he nudges me, we roll around, have some fun, and then we go about our day.”

Ray and Cusimano, 59, a lawyer and musician, married in Italy on September 24, 2005 — celebrating their 21st anniversary this year. They met at a mutual friend’s party in 2001. They have a rescue dog named Bella, a lake house in the Adirondacks, and a vacation home in Italy. They built their business and brand together. They have screaming matches regularly, which both have described as healthy communication. They disagree loudly and get over it fast. Neither of them, she has said, can stand people who are too quiet.

She is wildly, wildly lucky, she has said. He said carbonara. That was the second.

Ray has spoken about the marriage at length across multiple platforms — on her podcast “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” at the New York City Wine & Food Festival, and in interviews spanning two decades. What consistently emerges is a portrait of a couple who are genuinely different from each other and genuinely fine with it.

“John and I largely stay in separate corners,” she told PEOPLE. “He understands I need my space.” She has described herself as someone who is “not really good with downtime” — the podcast title is a statement of principle — and Cusimano, by her account, has built a life that accommodates that. He is a lawyer and a musician. She is Rachael Ray. They agreed in concept about what mattered. The rest, she has said, they figured out.

The fights are real. “John and I don’t calm it down ever,” she told her podcast. “We have volatile personalities. We don’t let things fester.” Cusimano has confirmed this. “It’s like there’s a steam valve; we let it off every once in a while.” They have not, as far as anyone can determine, let anything fester.

What Ray described at the Burger Bash — the snoring, the nudging, the rolling around, the going about their day — is not glamorous. It is also the description of a person who has found someone she wants to nudge back. Twenty-one years of marriage, screaming matches and all, and she is still bringing him home leftover carbonara and thinking he is charming for wanting it.

The pasta, apparently, still works.

apost.com

Are you a fan of Rachael Ray and John Cusimano? Do you think their love story is one of the most charming and relatable in the culinary world? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and other fans out there!