Scary Details About Rachael Ray Getting Mugged (Twice)

When Rachael Ray's home in upstate New York burned down in 2020, she and her husband, John Cusimano, had to move full-time into their NYC apartment. Their city living stint may have dredged up a few grim memories in Ray's past. Before her fame, Ray lived in a roach-infested apartment in Queens while working at the Upper East Side gourmet market, Agata and Valentina. In 1997, a teenager mugged her in the front entrance of her apartment. "This kid comes in behind me — next thing I know he shoves my face up against the door, jams a gun into my back and says, 'Give me your bag,'" Ray recalled to People. "I flipped the top off the mace my dad had given me when I moved to New York City, spun around and started screaming."

According to a crime report from the NYPD, in 1998 — the year after Ray was mugged — there were 39,003 robberies in NYC (street mugging falls under the "robbery" umbrella term). With approximately 7 million people living in the metropolitan area, Ray had about a 0.5% chance of being mugged, let alone it happening twice in one week. She told the New York Post that her mugger came back for revenge. "He pushed me down this little alleyway, and Liza [the apartment landlord's dog] runs down the hall at him and she scared him away," Ray said. Not before the assailant "beat the crap" out of her, as she put it to People.

Rachael Ray's tragic, real-life story was her sign to escape the city. So, she packed her bags and moved back upstate to the Adirondacks, where she managed Mr. Brown's Pub at The Sagamore Resort on Lake George. "People have a lot worse things in life. But it was like, 'O.K., I'm not going to wait for strike three,'" she told Vanity Fair. "I felt the whole universe was telling me, 'You're not supposed to be here right now.'"

It was lucky she moved, or else she wouldn't have found the job that launched her stardom. After her managing gig at the pub, Ray worked at Cowan & Lobel, a gourmet market in Albany. It was there when she began teaching "30 Minute Meals" classes, which caught the attention of an Albany CBS affiliate, who offered her an on-air segment, according to Saratoga Living. Ray went on to host her eponymous talk show, "The Rachael Ray Show," and authored a number of cookbooks. Now, Ray shares her recipes on the FYI Network's "Rachael Ray in Tuscany" and "Meals in Minutes." The celebrity cook certainly made lemonade out of lemons.