Gina Neely is best known for co-hosting Down Home with the Neelys.
The series ran for 143 episodes, becoming the highest-rated show on Food Network.
But trouble had been brewing in Neely's personal life.
From her humble roots to celebrity status, here's how far she's come — and where she's headed now!
Going by recipes like barbecue baked potatoes and chicken, pot roasts, and southern steamed
corn - and the stories behind those dishes that viewers discovered on Down Home with
the Neelys - it isn't difficult to guess that Gina Neely is proud of her Southern roots.
She was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, just a short walk away from Melrose High School,
where she met her future husband, Pat Neely.
Growing up, Gina was exposed to fresh food and practiced the now trendy farm-to-table
concept with her family, writing in the couple's cookbook, Back Home with the Neelys,
"Our grandparents used their backyards as gardens, and most of the vegetables our parents
and grandparents cooked with were grown in them."
The youngest of five siblings, Neely remembered how her childhood days were filled with love.
She shared with Aspire magazine,
"Even though I am the product of a single parent, I thank God for my awesome village
that surrounded me.
I spent a lot of time with my great great grandmother who was the matriarch of our family.
She had the ability to surround you with so much love that you never ever once felt left out or less than."
After graduating from high school, Neely moved to California for a few years.
But she soon returned to Memphis, where she has lived ever since.
Both Gina and Pat attended Melrose High School in Memphis.
When they met during their sophomore year, Pat recalled in their book that he was truly
mesmerized by his future wife.
He recalled,
"I don't believe I opened my mouth.
I couldn't take my eyes off her.
I am sure Gina was thinking, 'Can he talk?'"
A couple of years later, the two started dating.
But they split up by the end of their senior year.
Pat wrote,
"We graduated and parted ways - I went off to college to pursue my football dreams, and
Gina moved to California to live with her older sister and attend college."
Pat and Gina carried on with their lives and married other people in the 10 years that they were apart.
But in 1993, when they met up again at their ten-year high-school reunion, both were divorced.
Gina had a daughter from her first marriage, and Pat and his family had opened their own
barbecue restaurant.
However, despite the time gap, Pat's feelings for Gina were still very much alive.
He wrote,
"Our reunion was a real reunion.
The banquet was the prom we never had."
Gina moved back to Memphis and just two years after the big 'reunion,' the couple got married in 1995.
It just so happens that celebrity chef Paula Deen was an instrumental part of Gina and Pat's foray into showbiz.
In 2006, Deen's sons, Bobby and Jamie, had set out to hunt for the best local eateries
in the nation for a Food Network series called Road Tasted.
It was then that they chanced upon Neely's Bar-B-Que in Nashville.
According to Paula's forward in the Neelys' book, after taping the episode, the Deen brothers
knew they had struck gold.
Paula remembered,
"[They] called their momma and said, 'I think we've found something really special here.'"
"I was not even on camera.
And the producer was just watching me and he was like, 'What do you think about doing this show?'"
What followed was a chance for the couple to be featured on Paula's Party, a Food Network
show where Deen cooked and chatted with guest celebrities.
And the Neelys made a great first impression with network executive producer Mark Schneider.
Gina told Knox News,
"He said he saw something in us that was very natural and very comfortable."
That brought about a flood of opportunities for the Neelys.
First they came out with Down Home with the Neelys in 2008.
Then, in July of that year, they took over the Road Tasted series from the Deen brothers,
who wanted to turn their focus to their restaurant business.
"The crazy part about it was, I never wanted to do that show.
I never wanted to live my life quite out loud like that."
It was never Gina's intention to be famous.
On the day Road Tasted was set to be filmed at Neely's Barbecue, Gina had simply shown
up to support her husband and help the restaurant prep for the shoot.
But after watching her interact with the crew, producer Mark Schneider sensed a star quality in Neely.
Gina explained to Say It Southern, adding,
"I was just talking to the producer, laughing and having a good time, messing with people
as I love to do, and not knowing that the producer was looking at me the whole time."
When she was asked if she ever wanted to appear on TV, Gina supposedly replied,
"No, not really, but thank you!"
Fans may laugh at this now, but back then, Gina was dead-set against a career in showbiz.
But she also recognized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for herself and her husband.
And so, for her family, she put her hesitations aside and said 'yes' to what would become
one of the highest rated shows on Food Network, Down Home with the Neelys.
Her idea was just to do one show and return to her normal life, but it appeared that for
this couple, there would be no going back.
While Gina wasn't initially excited about living life in the public eye, it seems that
neither were her daughters.
Neely's daughter, Spenser, was 19, and her daughter Shelbi, was 13, when Down Home with
the Neelys premiered on Food Network.
In an interview with People, Gina revealed,
"[My] children 'hated' the show and the attention it brought, and hoped [I] would leave."
Caught between her daughters' wishes, and the pressure to accept a golden career opportunity,
Neely made a choice to sign on for the show with the condition that the family wouldn't
need to move from their home, and that the girls would continue with their normal schedule.
She wanted to make sure that the Neelys' choice to be on TV didn't impact their daughters' lives.
She told Say It Southern in 2018,
"I was really trying to hold on to that sense of normalcy."
"Being moms.
That's the best job in the world."
But despite all of the success, the Neelys' kids never warmed up to life as the offspring of celebrity chefs.
Gina said,
"They are just very private, normal girls.
And they still to this date don't like it."
"Patrick Neely, here's to more date nights to come."
"I'll be waitin' baby."
Not once on their show did it ever come across like Pat and Gina had relationship issues.
In fact, they were warm, flirtatious and very in sync - or, that's what viewers thought.
As Gina told People,
"I was going to divorce Pat prior to the show.
And then all of a sudden the train jumped on the track and I had to hold on for my life."
"He felt like we didn't spend enough time together.
I felt like we did, and we needed a little space."
Gina and Pat had known each other since they were just 1 year old, and had started a life
together with humble means.
Gina told Forbes,
"When Pat and I got together, we didn't even have a bed; we threw some pallets together to make one.
We were at zero and he had to build from that; but when you go through humble beginnings,
that's what makes you sustainable."
Unfortunately, their marriage could not be sustained, despite the show's success.
At the time, Gina felt that she and her husband weren't on the same page.
The duo sought help from a therapist many times, with Gina revealing to the outlet,
"I didn't want to relinquish my marriage, but I couldn't let [anyone else] dictate my
path or limit my future."
The star says she tried walking out of the relationship five times before she finally
closed the book on 20 years of marriage, in 2014.
In 2015, Gina announced that she had shrunk from a size 8 to a size 0 in a little over 12 weeks.
The star said her priority was, quote, "to feel better [and] have more energy", but she
ended up losing 35 pounds doing it.
She later put in some effort to gain a little bit of the weight back so that she didn't
look like what she called a "bobble head," according to People.
Neely, who was the spokesperson for the George Foreman Grill, had taken up the brand's Weight
Loss Challenge in 2013.
Neely was 45 years old then and was undergoing an emotionally challenging phase in her marriage.
She told IndyStar,
"Working out really became the saving grace for me if you will, getting me through all of that.
It kept me positive, it kept me moving."
"I feel lighter, I feel brighter, I feel sunnier, I feel so happy."
"I'm getting Gina back."
Her workouts included everything from CrossFit to running, walking, pole dancing, Zumba , and hip hop.
Besides exercising, she also changed her eating habits.
She replaced pork and beef with lighter meat such as chicken, turkey and fish.
And as far as eating healthy in a pinch, she said,
"I would keep a can of tuna, the kind that you pop open, and put it in my purse and eat
that right out of the can."
After Gina's divorce, she took a break from TV for over three years before producing her
own cooking show, Chop It Up with Gina Neely, on Aspire TV.
But Gina badly needed a break from showbiz before taking on the new venture, telling
a local NBC outlet,
"When I was on TV, living my life out loud, doing two shows, appearances, [a] New York
Times bestseller, [it was] everybody pulling, pulling, pulling.
You just feel like, 'Oh my God, I can't breathe.
Can I just get a little breath?'
So I needed to step back and assess things and look at my life as a whole and I didn't
really like what I saw and took the courage to [change] that."
"Who wants their hair to smell like smoke?
Not this weave, I'm not trying to do all that.
That ain't my ministry right there, I wanna stay cute while I grill."
On her own show, Gina gets to share her new outlook with fans, portraying a more relaxed,
authentic version of herself.
As she told Say it Southern, Food Network often controlled the way she appeared on camera.
But on Chop it up with Gina Neely, she says,
"People can really get to see a little more of my personality.
A little more me, in a more transparent way."
Gina was married for over two decades before she found herself single in her late 40s.
But the end of her marriage didn't discourage her from being open to finding love again.
She dove head first into the dating scene at the age of 52 through the reality show,
To Rome for Love, on Bravo.
The series followed five women as they searched for romance while exploring Italy and, of
course, dated their share of Italian men.
For Neely, the show was an opportunity to explore her true self, with the help of a few professionals.
She admitted to People,
"I got really angry when [love expert Diann Valentine] said I was so guarded because I
literally think of myself as an open spirit.
But I didn't realize that I've been protecting that part of me for so long that it almost
became second nature to me."
It appeared that the show gave Gina the chance to venture outside of her comfort zone in every way.
She said,
"I wanted to see what it's like to date outside of my race.
Italian men are very loving and they seem to be very easygoing, very playful, very fun
[and] not uptight."
Becoming a celebrity chef was never Gina Neely's plan.
And the success of Down Home with the Neelys was never her dream.
Instead, she originally did it for her husband, later realizing that she had forgotten to prioritize herself.
She said, via OWN,
"I found myself kind of trying to dim my light to make [Pat's] light shine.
And that is never a good thing.
[…] It became necessary for me to find my path."
Aiming to inspire others to find their true happiness, she began work on the self-help
book, These Are My Rules, This Is My Life and I Want It Back, in 2020.
She explained,
"My hope is most women will realize you do not have to be everything for everybody.
You can own this life without the guilt [and] without the shame."
"You don't stop living because bad things happen, you keep going."
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