Sandra Lee is one of the nation's leading lifestyle personalities, with 27 best-selling
books, four successful cooking shows, and her own magazine, earning her millions of
fans.
The longtime Food Network star who made "semi-homemade" a thing went through a lot to get to where
she is.
Here are some things you might not know about this Emmy-winning domestic diva.
Traumatic past
Born in Santa Monica is 1966, Sandra Lee's full name is Sandra Lee Waldroop.
Her parents were just teenagers when they had her, and when Lee was two, they split
up.
Lee and her sister went to live with their father's mother, Lorraine, who later showed
Lee how to cook and how to stretch a dollar.
It was a skill that later came in handy, according to her memoir, when Lee was 11 and had to
take care of her sister and step-siblings while her pill-addicted single mother abused
her both physically and mentally.
As a teen, her stepfather in her new home in Washington state "was sexual with her in
a way that [her] memoir leaves vague," according to New York Magazine.
When Lee was 15, she left Washington after her mother assaulted her, but her new life
with her real father in Wisconsin was also traumatic.
Lee witnessed her father allegedly rape his girlfriend and had to testify in the trial
that put her father in prison for one year.
Curtain cash
Lee went to college in Wisconsin for physical therapy and business for a time, but dropped
out to move back to California and work at selling her own home and garden products.
During this time she came up with "Kurtain Kraft," a line of DIY curtain hardware.
She saved $50,000 to make an infomercial to promote Kurtain Kraft, which earned her six
million dollars by the time she was 27.
She later faced a "cash-flow crisis" due to a slew of product returns, so Lee started
"diversifying her product line," including gardening and scrapbooking products, and soon
became a big name at QVC.
Semi-homemade star
The newly made millionaire also expanded her business to include cooking.
She came up with her trademarked "semi-homemade" recipe idea, even though, as New York Magazine
sneered, "Lee's culinary training consists of a two-week course at Le Cordon Bleu in
Ottawa."
But Lee wasn't trying to be the next Julia Child.
"So it's 70 percent store-bought readymade, plus 30 percent fresh ingredients, and you
get to take all the credit for something special, and something very tasty. Hahaha."
She wrote her first two Semi-Homemade cookbooks without a publishing contract, and used her
career connections to negotiate a publishing deal.
Her first heavily-promoted book hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2002.
TV takeover
After the success of her first Semi-Homemade book, Food Network wanted to give Lee her
own cooking show.
But she wanted to do a home-and-garden show instead.
As a compromise, the network agreed to let her incorporate tablescapes into the show,
as long as she also cooked.
Semi-Homemade Cooking With Sandra Lee launched in 2003 and became an immediate hit, with
three more Lee-hosted shows appearing on the network since.
But she's never gotten a lot of respect for her dishes, especially from foodies.
Food writer Amanda Hesser eviscerated her in the pages of The New York Times, saying,
"she seems more intent on encouraging people to create excuses for not cooking than on
encouraging them to cook wholesome simple foods."
Hesser also wrote that "Lee's reliance on brand-name products feels forced."
Lee wrote in her memoir that she was devastated by the newspaper's criticism, until an executive
at Food Network "reassured her that negative Times reviews had proved a reliable predictor
of Food Network success."
In 2012, Lee pointedly told The New York Times that critics of her recipes are "snobs," saying,
"I'm not sure that some of the food purists are in touch with what really goes on in American
households."
Let them hate cake
The one recipe for which Lee has gotten the most grief was her corn nut-topped, pie filling-stuffed
angel food Kwanzaa cake, which many considered culturally offensive.
Outspoken chef Anthony Bourdain called it a "war crime on television."
Denise Vivaldo, the food stylist and cookbook author who claimed to have created the recipe,
attacked Lee in a since-removed 2010 Huffington Post column about it, calling it a product
of Lee's "incredibly bad food taste."
New York Magazine reports that Lee had her lawyer send a letter to the Huffington Post
threatening to sue if they didn't pull the post.
When The New York Times asked Lee about the response to the recipe in 2012, she said,
quote, "It's shtick.
That's how some people get their press.
There are 17 million children in this country going hungry every day, and we're worried
about my Kwanzaa cake from 10 years ago?
That's what I think is ridiculous.
Yes, I can laugh about it."
Marriage material
Lee has been linked to New York governor Andrew Cuomo for more than a decade, but things were
not always so stable at home.
New York Magazine reported that "according to people who knew her well at the time,"
when she was living in Los Angeles in the 1990s, "she took a particular interest in
men who were already attached."
The magazine reported that an acquaintance recalled, Lee, quote, "felt that if a man
could be had, then he wasn't committed" and "said more than once, likely as a joke, that
she planned to write a book about how to steal a married man," a claim that Lee shot down
as "preposterous."
In 2001, Lee married KB Home CEO Bruce Karatz, a company she was a spokesperson for, who
was reportedly married at the time they met.
She even converted to Judaism for him, but they divorced in 2005.
Governor Cuomo was recently divorced when he began his relationship with Lee that same
year.
Sandra the Survivor
Lee was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and had a double mastectomy.
She suffered complications, and had to go under the knife again for more operations,
including reconstructive surgery.
She's been very open with her fans about what she has gone through.
Lee has hosted charitable events to raise money for cancer research, and also influenced
the governor to get legislation passed in New York to pay for more breast cancer screenings.
Now cancer-free, her and Cuomo have been vocal about encouraging the importance of early
detection.
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