By Deborah Lambeth
Paula Deen, the Southern darling of cable TV's Food Network channel, was born in Albany, Georgia. She learned the art of cooking from her grandmother when she'd spend her afternoons watching her cook. Never did she realize those "lessons" would come into play in a big way later in her life.
When Paula graduated from high school, she married her high school sweetheart. She thought she was going to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and have the perfect life. Soon after she was married, however, her father died and four years later, her mother. She had two small boys and suddenly her husband was uprooting them to move to Savannah for his job. All of these changes took a huge toll on Paula to the point where she developed agoraphobia and would not go out in public.
When Paula was 40, she and her husband became divorced. It would take Paula two years before she "woke up" and started living her life. According to Paula, she says "I was born on January 19, 1947, but I was reborn on June 19, 1989. That day, I became totally responsible for myself and my happiness. That day, with the help of my sons, Jamie and Bobby, we started The Bag Lady. "
The Bag Lady was Paula's first adventure into cooking and owning a catering company. Working out of her home, she and her boys would make bag lunches and other meals. Her sons would deliver the food. Soon her name was a household word and her business became a huge success. So much so that she wanted to open her own restaurant. The Best Western Hotel in Savannah hired Paula to do their cooking. Building on the successes of The Bag Lady and her job at Best Western, Paula opened her own restaurant called the Lady and Sons. The restaurant flourished in downtown Savannah. Due to its popularity, the restaurant moved into a larger building in the Historic District of Savannah, where it has been ever since.
Paula's rise to national and international recognition came from taking small steps. In 1997, she self-published her first cookbook, The Lady & Sons: Savannah Country Cooking. Providentially, a thunderstorm brought a literary agent to her restaurant where he not only dined on her great food, but also noticed her cookbook and bought a few copies. This led to the book being picked up by Random House and eventually it was promoted on QVC becoming one of the best-selling cookbooks.
In 1989, a friend introduced Paula to Gordon Elliot from the Food Network. Paula appeared on the show "Doorknock Dinners" where several episodes were filmed in Savannah. In 2002, Paula Deen's own show, "Paula's Home Cooking" premiered on the Food Network channel. She has gone on to write more cookbooks and she has also filmed cooking stories from other countries and has starred in a film. Paula also remarried in 2004, and most recently has become a grandmother. She and her sons still work together and they have their own show together called "Road Tasted."
To learn more about this maven of Southern-style cooking, you can visit Paula Deen's website. As you can see, she is the essence of perseverance and grabbing the kite by the tail, so to speak. Hers is truly an evolving story but with an authentic, "one of y'all" feeling to it.
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