Rachel Ray’s Career Cookin’

Freddy @ Gone Hollywood | Saturday, September 16, 2006

Rachel Ray has gone from a small time cooking show host to a big celebrity with her own talk show starting Monday. (See a video preview of that first episode at the show website.)

She recently sat down with PEOPLE to talk about her life.

In the past eight years Rachael Ray has produced 12 bestselling cookbooks, four top-rated Food Network shows, a monthly magazine and a line of kitchenware. And on Monday she will debut her syndicated talk show Rachael Ray.

Though she’s building an impressive empire, Ray still hasn’t gotten the hang of the diva thing. Her first order of business when she first saw her new Manhattan office decked out with photos of its star? “I defaced my picture,” she tells PEOPLE in its upcoming issue. “I have a fat head – I get freaked-out looking at pictures of me. So I got a Sharpie and drew horns and a goatee.”

Ray hopes to use her devilish sense of humor on air. “We’re about having a good laugh,” says Ray, the daughter of a restaurateur mom.

The set features a basketball hoop and a foosball table, and she has a rule: “No crying. I’m not that person.” The hour won’t be “celebrity-driven,” she says, though Oprah Winfrey – who decided to spearhead the project after Ray guest-starred on Oprah last year – will be appearing on the second episode. “We want guests to sit at the kitchen table, shoot some hoops and hang out. You’re not going to find any hard-hitting, who-are-you-sleeping-with questions.”

She met John Cusimano, an entertainment lawyer, at a party four years ago and they married last September.

As for making a family? “I’m almost 40; chances are I won’t have a child,” says Ray. “I don’t have time to do that properly. That doesn’t mean one day I wouldn’t adopt.”

And it doesn’t mean that she won’t have any downtime. On a recent evening Ray could be found not behind the stove but at a graffiti-covered basement bar in Manhattan. With her husband jamming on stage, she mouthed along to every word and air-drummed over her head. “I get to go home every night to my husband,” she says. “How lucky am I?”

Pretty lucky. And pretty hot, too, for a short cooking show host about to hit 40. I mean, that’s old. Almost as old as Allie!

Anyway, here are some pics from a photo shoot she did a while back for lad mag FHM: