Paula Deen: The Taste of Success

Paula Deen is well known for her Southern home cooking. She’s got a sugar soaked personality – even sweeter than her famous Not Yo’ Mama’s banana pudding recipe. Her boisterous laugh is contagious. The Emmy Award-winning show host, cook, author and even actress has built her dominion from the ground up, but it wasn’t always peaches and cream for this southern chef.

 The Albany, Ga. native experienced a great tragedy at a young age. Her parents died and her marriage to her high school sweetheart was failing. She began the lengthy battle with agoraphobia. Out of what seemed to be the end of the world, Deen took the last $200 she had and created “The Bag Lady,” a meal delivery service she started. She cooked and she would send her sons, Jamie and Bobby, to deliver the meals.

 “I was all consumed with survival. I knew that this was my last chance – my first and probably my only chance– to do something great, because I was 42 years old. I was ready to get out of my marriage of 27 years. I had no education, and I had two sons that I wanted to give a better life. I would not let anything deter me. I even put my relationship with my children on the line, because I felt like if I could make this little business succeed it would make their life better,” Deen said with Green Global Travel, a travel website.

 Her success continued and now she’s got this empire that she built with her family. However, she wasn’t always interested in cooking. Deen told Good Housekeeping that as a teenager she had a busy social life, but realized that she’d have to learn to cook eventually.

 “It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school that I asked Mama if I could come into the kitchen and have her teach me how to cook something. Well, I wasn’t in there five minutes before she said, ‘OK, honey, you have to go now.’ I made her so nervous she was about ready to throw up. So I really didn’t have an interest in being in the kitchen until after I was married, when I was 18. It didn’t take me long to realize that Mama was not going to show up at my house every day and cook,” Deen explained to Good Housekeeping. 

After cooking to save her family with “The Bag Lady,” she began cooking at a Best Western hotel in Savannah, Ga. Five years later, she and her sons opened the Deens’ first restaurant “The Lady and Sons.” The restaurant was a huge hit in the city and is now a Savannah staple – a place you have to try every time you visit the city.

After the restaurant, Deen encountered an avalanche of success. The restaurant’s popularity led to Deen’s first cookbook – 1998′s The Lady and Sons Country Cookbook. The cookbook’s popularity led to Deen’s first television appearance on QVC. Then, by 2002, Deen had her own show “Paula’s Home Cooking” on the Food Network. Since then, she has had other shows like “Paula’s Party,” where her sons made occasional cameos and “Paula’s Best Dishes.” These shows won Deen two Emmy awards, but the success she’s created still hasn’t sunk in for her.

“To me, I’m still that ‘Bag Lady’ with just $200. So, it’s hard for my li’l mind to wrap around everything. I can tell you I’m successful, but I don’t know if I will ever get to a point where I can say, ‘Damn! I’m successful. I really am successful.’  I know that I’m successful, yet sometimes I almost don’t believe it. How could this happen? How could this happen to a little girl from southwest Georgia?” the cook said with the SUCCESS Magazine website.

 Now, Deen has authored 14 cookbooks, she has a bi-monthly magazine Cooking with Paula Deen and she even had a role in the movie Elizabethtown.

 With the huge success Deen has created with her family, one thing is still certain. That contagious laugh and sugar coated smile belongs to a force to be reckoned with. Deen is a cook on a mission.

-Geneva Toddy