Chef Cat Cora is now a staple of food television and writing, but it wasn't always that way.
Here's how Cora went from a small-town girl to a world-famous celebrity chef.
Cat Cora was born "Melanie" on April 3rd, 1967,
to a teenager who had been sent to a "home for unwed mothers" near New Orleans. Cora's biological
mother stayed at the home until giving birth to her daughter. Just a week after her birth,
a middle-class couple from Jackson, Mississippi, Virginia Lee and Spiro Cora, adopted Cora from
the Mississippi Children's Home, changed her name to Catherine Anne Cora, and gave her a new home.
Of her days as a child, Cora remembers plucking soft figs from trees with her two brothers,
water-skiing on a lake, and camping on an island near home. Her mom, a psychiatric nurse, and dad,
a world history teacher, were extremely liberal for a family in the 1960s. In Cooking as Fast as I
Can, she vividly recalls the Thanksgiving dinners that saw guests of different race and sexual
orientation drop by. Theirs was an inclusive home that later defined Cora's personality.
Cora was happy, but at the same time curious about her real mom. Her birth mom had called
the Mississippi Children's Home every year on Cora's birthday to seek some info about her.
When they finally reconnected, there were tears, of course, but also a lot of love.
Cat Cora had it rough in school. Though she was popular and good at sports and cheerleading,
she was constantly bullied. Cora once told Larry King,
"An older girl who unknowingly hated me and had a locker right next to me, tortured me mercilessly
every single day. [...] her friends beat the hell out of me, and yes, the word 'kill' came up."
As if being bullied wasn't enough to deal with as a teenager,
Cora was also struggling to accept and be accepted for her sexuality.
All through her school years, she had to hide the fact that she was gay. This meant that
she couldn't even truly express her feelings for her first love at 17. As she said to Larry King,
"I was born in the '60's in Mississippi. I was also born gay. [...] I tried to pray
'it' away at church every Sunday like a good Christian girl from
the South. [...] I wanted so badly to be straight like my friends."
But if experience has taught Cora anything,
it is that she deserved to live her true life and, quote, "be accepted with love and compassion."
She later came out to her loving and supportive parents at 19.
Since Cat Cora's parents worked full time, she and her brothers often had to fend for
themselves after returning from school. Cora wrote in Cooking as Fast as I Can,
"We either made ourselves a red-necked grilled cheese — white bread topped
with 'green can' parmesan melted in the toaster oven — or else we'd
turn on the FryDaddy and make ourselves some french fries."
That cool FryDaddy was enough to boost little Cora's confidence to make more
food. When she was in elementary school, Cat hosted tea parties, and also baked shamrock,
heart, and star-shaped cookies at home with her mom's help. Eventually, when her folks
bought an Easy-Bake Oven, she conceptualized her first business idea around it — to make
vanilla cakes with chocolate frosting, and sell them in the community for five cents.
Sadly, few in Cora's neighborhood cared — she got only one customer.
But Cora wasn't ready to throw in the towel because of a bad sale. At 15,
she drew up a full-fledged plan to start a restaurant. After all, she had restaurateurs
in the family — her grandfather owned cafes, and her godfather ran restaurants in Mississippi. Cora
is now living that dream, having opened more than 18 restaurants throughout her career.
Cat Cora didn't doubt her love for cooking, but she was in a haze about how to pursue it.
She had studied exercise physiology and nutrition
at the University of Southern Mississippi and was planning to do pre-med. However,
there was one small hitch — Cat loved cooking too much. So, she got a job at Nick Apostle's,
a five-star restaurant in Jackson at that time. Cora told The Sip Magazine,
"I started waiting tables, bartending, doing anything I could to get my foot in the door."
She even tried to start her own restaurant, though that first attempt fizzled.
At this point, Cora realized she needed a break. She was a fresh graduate with a
lot of saved money who didn't have a clear career objective yet and sought answers.
She was, therefore, a perfect candidate for a backpacking trip to Europe.
A four-month tour around Europe only cemented her desire to be a chef.
The final push came at a book-signing event where Cora met chef Julia Child and was lucky
enough to get a one-on-one with her. That conversation was the turning point for Cora.
"She said, 'You pay it forward, like I'm doing for you right
now.' You know, just a lot of words of wisdom. And she said, 'You must go to
the Culinary School of America because it's the Harvard of culinary schools.'"
The day after talking to Julia Child,
Cora took the food icon's advice and applied to the prestigious Culinary School of America.
Being the first in anything always has a story of resilience attached to
it. Cat Cora's is no different. She was the first woman to be inducted
into the Culinary Hall of Fame by the American Culinary Federation,
and the first woman to be an Iron Chef in the Food Network series of the same name.
"I always love being the first of something."
To be able to earn these accolades, Cora had to wade through a mire of shockingly sexist
attitudes that slowed her career growth. In an interview with The Huffington Post,
Cora had this to say about her instructors at the Culinary School of America:
"They were old-school types that still believed that men should be the ones cooking in the
kitchens and not the women. [...] I faced harassment and discrimination and [was told],
'You shouldn't be here, you should be back home in Mississippi, barefoot and pregnant.'"
Another set of challenges awaited her after graduation. Cora told Money magazine,
"When I went to France [early in my career],
I got 10 rejection letters in a row saying, 'We don't allow females in our kitchen."
In the two decades since then, there is still a yawning gap between the number
of men and women restaurant owners. In her interview with The Huffington Post,
Cora quoted the specifics, telling the interviewer,
"Only 7% of owners or executives at restaurants in this country are women."
Cora is doing her part to help close this gap by
running a mentorship program specifically for female chefs.
Cat Cora was too busy honing her profile as a restaurateur to be thinking of television
in the '90s. By then, she had worked in some of the finest restaurants in Europe,
trained under the stalwarts of the culinary world, and opened an Italian restaurant called
Postino in San Francisco. Life seemingly couldn't get better. But when Cora got an opportunity to
star in a television show called Bay Café hosted by chef Joey Altman, her life did get better.
Being in front of the camera made Cora realize that she had another talent aside from cooking.
Writing in Cooking as Fast as I Can, Cora had this to say about her first experiences on TV,
"The task of making a dish in front of the camera turned out to be weirdly and deeply satisfying."
The cameraman and Altman himself were stunned by Cora' naturalistic performance.
Call it clairvoyance or sheer confidence, but Cora knew she was worth a larger audience.
So she sent the recorded tape to Food Network and bagged the opportunity to host The Melting Pot,
an ethnic cuisine show. She followed that up by appearing in the series, My Country, My Kitchen.
In addition to her TV appearances, Cora started writing columns for the Contra Costa Times,
and even wrote her first cookbook, Cat Cora's Kitchen.
When Cora became an Iron Chef in 2005, she was the first and then the only female to be so.
Being on Iron Chef, for Cora, was more than just being on a cooking competition. The reality show,
which requires as many culinary skills as physical fitness and mindfulness,
helped Cora prove that, quote, "women can cook as hard and fast as men."
Cora competed on Iron Chef for almost six years and appeared in 12 seasons.
It was only in season 11 that another woman Iron Chef, Alex Guarnaschelli,
came into the picture. In the afterglow of the success that came with Iron Chef,
Cora hosted Around the World in 80 Plates and judged My Kitchen Rules alongside chef Curtis
Stone. She stayed away from competing for a decade, before jumping right
back in with Food Network's bracket-style contest Tournament of Champions, in 2021.
Chef Cat Cora is a good samaritan. It's a quality of hers that was recognized by
President Obama himself, who awarded Cora The President's Volunteer Service Award
for her efforts to keep the world safely fed. Cora told Food & Wine,
"What I don't think people understand yet is that chefs and other culinary professionals are just so
important in emergency feeding relief. Untrained people don't know how to keep food sanitary,
and the last thing you want in a crisis is to have a food-borne illness breakout."
So, in 2004, Cora founded Chefs for Humanity, an organization that follows a Doctors without
Borders-like model, presenting one large platform for people in the culinary field to
come together to support a cause. Chefs for Humanity's aim was to provide aid to those
affected by the tsunami of 2004 that took more than 200,000 lives. Cora said via her website,
"I decided to take on hunger and dedicate energy to connect with others to help bring relief to
those in need and provide needed education on nutrition to improve health and well-being."
In her pursuit to understand the issues plaguing the vulnerable population,
Cora traveled to Honduras and Nicaragua as part of The United Nations World Food
Programme in 2007. She also helped launch a school nutrition program in a Zambian village
and raised funds for clean water and therapeutic milk formula for infants.
Cat Cora and her first wife Jennifer's relationship seemed right out of a fairytale.
The two were together for 17 years and married for two,
during the span of which they had four boys. So it was a shocker for those who
had been following their love life when Cora announced their split in 2015. Cora told People,
"It is with great sadness, that after 17 years, a tremendous amount of work, careful
consideration and heavy hearts, my wife and I have mutually decided to no longer remain married."
Cora's married life had started falling apart in 2015, with the
chef alleging that her partner wanted to destroy her life. Cora told Page Six,
"It's cyber-stalking, mental and emotional distress and abuse."
Cora claimed that though they had officially divorced each other,
Jennifer had continued to harass her. In 2020,
per Page Six, Cora even filed a petition for a restraining order against her ex-wife.
After a rather tumultuous end to a long relationship with her ex-wife, Cat Cora
was ready to find a new love and settle down. As it turned out, it wasn't a big challenge for the
culinary star, who found someone the year she was officially out of her previous relationship. Cora
met Nicole Ehrlich, a music video producer and director, in 2016. It was Ehlrich who reached out
to Cora after recognizing her from the many shows she had starred in. The couple hit it off and,
after two years, decided to tie the knot in a villa in Santa Barbara, California in 2018.
Speaking to Yahoo! Life, Ehrlich referred to Cora as her:
"My angel on earth."
As for Cora, she felt that Ehrlich was a "game-changer" for her. Cora told Yahoo! Life,
"I thought to myself, 'I am in trouble. She is everything I've ever been looking for.'"
After her marriage with Ehrlich, Cora was mom to six children — four of whom
she had shared with her ex, and two of Ehrlich's.
"We're a blended, modern Brady Bunch."
But sadly, the picture-perfect family couldn't stay together as vowed.
Ehlrich filed for divorce in 2021, three years after their wedding.
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