Rachael Ray and John Cusimano’s Relationship Timeline — From an Awkward First Meeting to Building Their Dream Home in Italy

Rachael Ray and her husband, John Cusimano, have been cooking together for over 20 years.

The Food Network host and entertainment lawyer attribute their success in love to knowing who they are as individuals.

“John and I didn’t meet until later in life, and didn’t get married until we were almost 40,” Ray told PEOPLE in 2021. “We knew who we were. … We’re very good with giving each other space to work on our passions.”

Viewers got a peek at the couple’s dynamic when Cusimano made appearances on The Rachael Ray Show before it ended in 2023. “I don’t think either of us planned on spending the rest of our lives with anyone else,” he said on the daytime TV talk show. “It all changed when we met.”

Now, the celebrity chef is returning with her new A&E shows, Rachael Ray’s Holidays and Rachael Ray’s Rebuild — both of which premiered on Dec. 8 — and her husband will be featured again.

From their memorable first date to how they keep their romance alive, here’s everything to know about Rachael Ray and John Cusimano’s relationship.

2001: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano meet

In honor of Valentine’s Day in 2020, Cusimano joined Ray on her cooking show, and the two shared how they first met.

According to the chef, they crossed paths at a mutual friend’s party, who had been trying to set them up for a year. While at the event, Ray and Cusimano noticed each other because they were surrounded by taller people.

“I like to say we saw each other among a sea of knees,” he said.

“We crossed a crowded room and started talking and we have talked every day since the night we met,” she added.

Ray later told PEOPLE that they hit it off and stayed out until 4 a.m. that evening.

September 24, 2005: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano get married

Ray and Cusimano dated for several years before they tied the knot in a place they both love: Italy. The couple wed at a Tuscan castle called Castello di Velona.

“He came at a point in my life when I had decided, I’m not going to chase [marriage],” Ray told PEOPLE in 2007. “I don’t think young men or women should feel pressured into marriage. You shouldn’t marry anyone, in my opinion, who you have to try hard for.”

Cusimano has also said he’s happy with a low-pressure approach to their relationship.

“It’s fun to come home after a hard day’s work and just cook dinner,” he said. “The place I’m happiest is curled up in bed with Rachael and the puppy.”

September 19, 2015: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano renew their vows

Returning to Castello di Velona 10 years after their wedding, Ray and Cusimano renewed their vows in front of their closest people, including celebrity chefs like Guy Fieri, Ken Oringer and Anne Burrell, who all took turns cooking for the crowd.

The couple flew about 100 of their family and friends to Italy for the celebration, and while the ceremony was a special event in 2015, Ray, Cusimano and their loved ones have gone back to the castle every year since then.

“We’ve done this celebration every year for 10 years,” Ray told PEOPLE in 2015. “We’re very busy; I have five jobs. We don’t see everybody often enough, and we probably take them and their friendship for granted. But they make us better people for knowing them.”

Ray and Cusimano’s dog, Isaboo, also participated in the big day, walking Ray down the aisle.

“John tied the little ring box to her,” she said. “She has a little wreath of flowers around her neck and my friend who’s an artist painted her harness and it was just sort of mixed in with the flowers. She was phenomenal.”

February 13, 2018: Rachael Ray reveals how she and John Cusimano celebrate Valentine’s Day

Ray and Cusimano’s decades-long Valentine’s Day traditions are rooted in their passion for food and music.

“He makes me a playlist every year and I make him his favorite meal which is pasta carbonara,” she told PEOPLE in 2018. “And I give him a bouquet of salamis from around the world, because he just loves pork — what are you gonna do?”

February 2020: Rachael Ray reveals the key to her strong bond with John Cusimano

Ray told PEOPLE in 2020 that her relationship with Cusimano was still going strong nearly 20 years later because of all they have in common.

“We actually like each other, have a lot of the same interests, and find it sexy to share bad behavior, like staying up too late, eating the wrong foods, and listening to loud music — rap, opera and any of our 3,000 records — wherever we are,” she said.

Ray added, “We love being together.”

February 14, 2020: John Cusimano shares how he proposed to Rachael Ray

Though Cusimano had been planning to propose — he already had a ring — the moment he chose to pop the question was spontaneous.

“She was crying because our apartment was under construction, and it wasn’t going to be ready for the holidays for our families,” Cusimano said on The Rachael Ray Show. “I just wanted her to stop crying, so I threw the ring at her head.”

He continued, “She screamed and I said something which at the time I thought was very charming, but I have no idea what I said.”

February 24, 2020: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano build a home where they were married

Because Ray and Cusimano love revisiting the place they wed and make a trip back to Tuscany with family and friends annually, they decided to make their spot in Italy more permanent.

“Sarteano is charming, romantic and beautiful, and since we like to go back each year, I bought some land, and we are now building a house so we can have our friends stay with us in Italy,” she told PEOPLE. “We are so excited!”

March 2020: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano move The Rachael Ray Show into their home

Faced with the shutdown of her production facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ray and Cusimano decided they would make The Rachael Ray Show happen during lockdown — with or without a studio.

“Our home was a light switch where we would turn off from work mode and deal with our lives,” Ray told PEOPLE. “For years, we had denied people access to it, and curated it as a quiet, special space … It was our little world to just be us. Then all of a sudden, we had to let everyone in.”

May 20, 2020: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano’s dog dies

Ray and Cusimano’s pit bull, Isaboo, died in the middle of 2020.

“Our beloved Isaboo passed today in her backyard in the sun in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. In our arms. Peacefully,” she shared on Instagram. “Today @johnmcusimano and I mourn the loss of a dog; a pitbull who taught us more about unconditional love, empathy, and understanding of one another than we could have ever imagined.”

About a month later, Ray and Cusimano added a new family member to their home: Bella Boo Blue, whom they adopted and named as a tribute to Isaboo.

August 9, 2020: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano’s home burns down

When an ember that blew out of the home’s chimney landed on the roof, Ray and Cusimano’s New York home was engulfed in a fire that she later described as a “total loss.” The couple, their dog and Ray’s mother, who was residing in a cabin on the property, were not harmed.

“Thank you to our local first responders for being kind and gracious and saving what they could of our home,” Ray wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Grateful that my mom, my husband, my dog… we’re all okay.”

“These are the days we all have to be grateful for what we have, not what we’ve lost,” she added.

On the season premiere of her show in 2020, Ray talked openly about what happened the night their home was destroyed.

“On August 9th, my house burned,” she said. “15 years of memories; 40 years of notebooks, drawings, thoughts, my life’s work. In the years that I lived here, I learned an awful lot. In the few weeks since it burned, I think I’ve learned even more.”

Ray went on to describe what happened as they discovered the fire, which they were alerted to when a man yelled from outside that the roof was on fire.

She described running upstairs to get “medicine, my notebooks, my mother’s high school ring, things that when your house is burning down, you don’t want to leave … But when I ran to the top of the stairs, I could hear the fire in the wall. I could hear the electricity, I could hear danger.”

The couple evacuated their home safely.

October 1, 2020: Rachael Ray gives a tour of where she and John Cusimano are staying

While they rebuilt a new home, Ray and Cusimano lived in a guest house on their property and continued to film her show from there.

“Although we lost our home, this is strangely homey because it is literally a small version of our house,” Ray said on the air.

Though it took a year to reestablish a home base, Ray and Cusimano remained focused on the goal.

“We have volatile personalities but we’re both very practical too,” she told PEOPLE in 2022. “That’s the lawyer side of him and the domestic side of me. We’re like, ‘These are the things that must be accomplished today. And we will get to this only by doing what work is necessary.’ ”

August 9, 2021: Rachael Ray and John Cusimano give a peek at their Tuscany home

In the editor’s note of the fall 2021 magazine issue of Rachael Ray in Season, Ray shared some happy news.

“I’m writing this just before I go to Italy for the first time in three years,” she wrote. “I love it there and have missed it. My mother’s family and both of John’s parents’ families hail from there. My husband and I got married there.”

Ray went on to share that she “achieved my life’s goal of buying a property” in Tuscany in 2018 and though there were several delays along the way — including striking a show deal with A&E and the COVID-19 — renovations eventually resumed.

September 13, 2021: Rachael Ray reveals her and John Cusimano’s reconstructed home

Ray and Cusimano’s upstate New York home was finally ready to live in again a year after the fire.

“This is our house,” she said on an episode of her show, adding that she and Cusimano rebuilt the house “back to a fresh shell that is very much the same.”

However, there were a few notable exceptions: they changed the roof from wood to tin and made one room more hospitable to guests.

“We took out the skylights in the bottom guest room because no one liked them,” she explained. “It woke them up too early.”

November 2021: Rachael Ray discusses how she and John Cusimano support each other

In her 2021 book This Must Be the Place, Ray shared how the pair weathered tough times.

“We knew we’d get through this together,” she told PEOPLE. “When you’re left at home alone for too long, you start to lose a little perspective. You can get tunnel vision and think, ‘Everything’s revolving around us and our little problems.’ But there are so much worse positions we could be in.”

She continued, “At the end of the day, John and I, we always come back to grateful. Some days are different than others, but we try to say, ‘Okay, here’s the new plan,’ even when we get down.”

February 14, 2022: Rachael Ray says she and John Cusimano “still got it”

In a sweet tribute to her husband, Ray posted photos of them on Instagram for Valentine’s Day, saying that after 16 years of marriage, they “still got it.”

The snaps featured the couple smiling and embracing.

“We balance each other,” she told PEOPLE a year prior. “We always have.”

November 12, 2024: Rachael Ray opens up about her and John Cusimano not having children

During an episode of her podcast, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Ray discussed living child-free and the response she received about the decision.

According to the chef, although she has gotten “bashed for it over the decades,” she experiences joy through her pets, whom she describes as “rays of light.”

“For me, if I have the absolute worst day, or I’m sick as a dog — as the expression goes — the thing that makes me feel best is to go home and literally climb into bed under a blanket with my dog,” she explained.