Paula Deen is synonymous with Southern cooking. From corned beef sandwiches to banana pudding,
she made a name for herself with indulgent dishes. But she's since crafted healthier
recipes and made an effort to revive her reputation. Here's how Paula Deen is seriously turning
heads.
"I have just found that the harder I worked, the luckier I got."
Born in 1947, in Albany, Georgia, Deen's teen years coincided with the Civil Rights Movement
of the 1950s and '60s. She recalled in her memoir, It Ain't All About the Cookin',
"It was happening. […] African Americans were [claiming] their right for fair and equal
treatment and some white folks were inspired to rethink old ways."
In high school, as she witnessed history being made, Deen confessed that she wasn't the best
student. And, she might have flunked algebra three times, admitting,
"If I could have made a livin' cheerleading, that would have been my chosen path."
According to the chef, Deen's dad wanted her to be a dental hygienist. But Deen wanted
to be a model. In fact, she applied to a modeling school and got in, unbeknownst to her parents.
But since her family would never allow her to live the jet-setting life of a working
model, she did what any other teen in her town might do; she got married. Paula and
her high school sweetheart, Jimmy Deen, tied the knot in 1965 when she was 18 years old.
Just a year after Deen got married, her father died suddenly after heart surgery. And something
inside Paula snapped. A gripping fear overtook her, and wouldn't relent for decades. She
explained to Oprah,
"The night my daddy died, I had to sleep between my husband and my mother in the same bed."
"It was hell. It was pure, unadulterated hell."
Deen became incapable of stepping out even for simple errands like getting groceries.
She later learned that she was experiencing agoraphobia , telling the New York Times,
"Some days, I could get to the supermarket, but I could never go too far inside. I learned
to cook with the ingredients they kept close to the door. […] In those days, in Georgia,
nobody was going to a psychiatrist just to mend your spirit."
It appeared the only alternative was to immerse herself in cooking. She said,
"I could concentrate on what was in my pots and block out what was in my head."
Without knowing it, she was charting her path to be one of the most popular chefs in America.
"This smells so good."
All Deen wanted to be was a good wife and mother. She shared in her memoir,
"It was my dream that my husband would earn the living and take care of us, and that making
money would never be my responsibility."
But she soon realized that her family couldn't survive on a single income. So Deen rolled
up her sleeves and tried out a range of different jobs, from hanging wallpaper and cleaning
bathrooms at the local Kroger, to managing billing at a medical center.
"I would make these wonderful little meals. They tasted good, but they looked like hell,
honey."
Eventually, Deen launched a lunch delivery catering business called "The Bag Lady," in
1989. It became wildly popular and Deen was on her way to celebrity chef stardom.
Deen had been saving a little every day from the profits that she made running The Bag
Lady. She also scrimped and saved at the grocery store, where she wrote that she wasn't above
buying slightly old fruit for a discounted price.
"My dream, Oprah, was to be able to buy groceries for my family on Wednesday, if payday wasn't
until Friday. That was my big dream."
By being smart with her money, Deen was able to save $4,000 — enough to rent out a brick
and mortar space for her business. 'The Lady', as she called her new location, had a capacity
of 30 to 40 seats. She served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and had her sons and their girlfriends
waiting tables. After her lease ended, Deen bought her own place in downtown Savannah,
Georgia.
Within three years, USA Today was calling it the 'International Meal of the Year', according
to The Lady and Sons. Other accolades followed, and Deen appeared to be unstoppable. Soon
enough, The Lady and Sons expanded to a three-story building, able to seat over 300 hungry customers.
Just like she did with her restaurant business, Deen dove into writing with zero prior experience.
With no knowledge of how traditional publishing worked or who the top publishers even were,
all she knew was that she had a bunch of handwritten recipes passed down through generations, and
she wanted the world to share them. Unlike most first-time authors, Deen wrote in her
memoir about her very first cookbook, Favorite Recipes from The Lady and her Friends,
"[It was] so stinking easy to write, it was unbelievable."
"I've written a lot. You know what, and they said when I was in high school I couldn't
read a book, much less write one."
As fate would have it, a copy of her book was picked up by an editor from publishing
giant Random House. Deen's first book hit the shelves as The Lady and Sons Savannah
Country Cooking, in 1998. Having sold tens of thousands of copies per day, according
to Eater, Deen wrote,
"America was ready for Southern Country cooking, it seemed."
"I still have to pinch myself because I go in, they'll start clappin' and screamin' and
I wanna look around to see who they're seein'."
While she clearly knows how to work an audience these days, Deen's first taste of national
TV came with a guest spot on Good Morning America. She recalled in her book,
"When the segment aired, I could hear the quiver in my voice and I could see my hand
shake, but I was never again scared on TV after that."
Deen must have had an inkling that she was cut out to be a TV star, but her hunch was
confirmed when she met Australian journalist and host, Gordon Elliott. Back then, Elliott
had a show called Doorknock Dinners on Food Network, of which Deen would later take part.
He was instrumental in getting Deen's foot in the door at Food Network. But while she
guested on various series, having her own show still seemed impossible for the middle-aged
hopeful. She told Food & Wine,
"Here I was, this grey-headed, older Southern girl who wasn't a size 2 and didn't have a
culinary degree. I think [Food Network] had their doubts whether America had a need for
anything like that."
"What makes her so wonderful is people can relate to her."
But America was ready for her. And her show, Paula's Home Cooking, delighted fans for over
a decade. Deen wonders whether the tragedy of September 11th was what ultimately made
the network's decision. She said,
"I think a lot of people needed comfort food."
Deen's marriage to Jimmy lasted 27 years. But his excessive drinking followed the couple
like a dark shadow from the very beginning of their relationship. Deen wrote in her memoir,
"For about twenty-five years I'd endured not only my own awful agoraphobia but also Jimmy's
drinking, his insults, and both of us tearing each other down in a thousand different ways."
"I was in a 27-year marriage that I knew I could not fix. We just couldn't bring out
the best in each other."
Soon after her catering business took off, Deen ended her marriage in 1992. And work
quickly became her biggest priority as her fame spread beyond Georgia. But there came
a point when she realized that her life was out of balance. She wrote,
"My business was well on its way to being successful. But my social life was in the
pits. My life was consumed with work and family, about 95 percent work and 5 percent family."
"How did I go from $20 to $20 million? I worked like a damn dog."
Deen prayed for a "neighbor". And one day, her dogs led her to just such a neighbor's
house. She remembered,
"I chased those dogs around the wall and right into the arms of a man I'd never seen before,
propped on his fence and talking on his cell phone. He looked like Ernest Hemingway."
"I have met the man of my dreams. And he asked me to marry him. And I said yes."
His name was Michael Groover and he was a tugboat captain. The two hit it off, and were
married in 2004.
By 2007, Deen had published five books, was starring on Food Network, owned a chain of
restaurants, and had tied the knot for the second time. She also had a lot to lose as
the public face of a booming empire. She wrote in her memoir,
"Maybe if you heard the truth about Paula Deen, about the mistakes I made in my life,
how bad my judgment's been at times, and how guilty I feel because my mothering wasn't
always so wonderful […] well, maybe you wouldn't be quite as lovin' to me as you have
been. And that would kill me."
"You know a lot has gone on in this kitchen."
In her book, Deen presents herself as someone far from the perfect personality that TV had
painted her to be. She even confessed that she is a smoker, adding,
"[It's] an addiction I can't [quit], though I try every day."
The fare that Deen dishes out in her restaurants lands solidly under the umbrella of comfort
food. But after fans learned that the queen of Southern cooking had been concealing her
type 2 diabetes diagnosis for three years, according to The New York Times, her offerings
got a little harder for fans to digest.
"I'm gonna add a stick of butter."
Deen was roundly criticized for promoting all things butter while knowing she had to
clean up her own diet. In fact, when she learned that she was diabetic , she said,
"I went home to my kitchen and threw out everything that was white. White bread, white rice, white
potatoes, white pasta. I did that for four months, y'all!"
"Then I started practicing moderation."
With a healthier diet, she lost nearly 40 pounds. But the fact that Deen hid her diagnosis
from the public while she made over $10 million a year advocating unhealthy food did not sit
well with fans, according to Business Insider. Her announcement also coincided with her new
high-paying gig as a spokesperson for drug company Novo Nordisk , further souring public
opinion of the star.
Deen acknowledges salty language as one of her weaknesses, writing in her book,
"I tell people who come to my cooking class that I can be a little bawdy and I sure hope
that I don't upset them."
Yet, her choice of words would prove to be her undoing. Deen was nothing short of a culinary
star when Food Network let her go in 2013, to the shock of many fans. The warm and welcoming
host who was always seen with a hearty plate of food, had, according to the New York Times,
"Admitted to using racist language, and tolerating racist jokes in one of her restaurants."
"Inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable."
This revelation was soon followed by the cancellation of her Food Network shows and the end of a
profitable Walmart deal. As reported by Today, she later told fans,
"I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I've done, and I want to learn
and grow from this. Inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.
I've made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I beg you, my children, my team, my fans,
my partners, I beg for your forgiveness."
Some, however, called the apology half-hearted and pointed to other awkward details about
Deen's life. But despite ongoing support from fans, Deen was out at the network.
In the fallout, like dominoes, all the standing connections that Deen had with a sizable number
of brands fell apart. Target stopped selling her line of pots and pans, while Walmart announced
it would no longer stock Deen's line of merch, according to The New York Times. Drugmaker
Novo Nordisk dropped her as their spokesperson and her publisher, Random House, officially
called it quits.
But armed with ladles and oven mitts, Deen made a plan to reconnect with her audience
by launching the Paula Deen Live! tour. She also bought all the rights to her shows and
released them on her own digital platform, The Paula Deen Network — along with original
content. Instead of drifting out of the spotlight, fans saw her in more roles than ever before
— including a stint on Dancing with the Stars. She ultimately found her way back to
cooking TV with Positively Paula, in 2018.
"Food is comfort, food is friendship, and most importantly, food is love."
When the COVID-19 lockdown began in 2020, Deen hoped to reach out to her fans and stay
connected. So, with the help of her team, she began posting videos of simple recipes
as part of a new "Quarantine Cooking" series.
"Now, with so much time on our hands, it's a great time to get into the kitchen and make
something that you have been putting off trying to tackle."
One of the first episodes featured the Southern specialty, Georgia Cracker Salad. The series
also features Paula's daughter-in-law, Claudia, who shares lighter recipes like avocado toast.
And in late 2020, the show gave way to "Holiday Recipes" that featured a sweet potato bake,
broccoli casserole, and southern cornbread dressing.
Ever since the beginning of 2021 though, Deen has leaned towards healthier cooking, proving
that this chef is always on her toes, and looking toward the future.
"Let's get to cookin'."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite
celebrity chefs are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so
you don't miss a single one.