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In 1999, USA Today food critic Jerry Shriver named The Lady and Sons "International Meal of the Year." learn 50 facts you didn't know about Paula Deen.
1. Her interests are cooking, family, seeing my fans, charity work, traveling, eating, playing on my iphone, shopping, and slots.
2. With her boys in their teens and her family near homelessness, Paula took her last $200, reached deep inside her soul and started The Bag Lady, a home-based catering company that marked the start of Deen's professional cooking career.
3. With sons Jamie and Bobby delivering "lunch-and-love-in-a-bag," beginning in June 1989, Paula turned her life around by sharing what she knew best, traditional Southern cooking.
4. Overcoming poverty, self doubt and health challenges to achieve success and acclaim she could never have imagined, Paula has become one of the best-known personalities in the world of cooking.
5. Deen's first business, The Bag Lady, brought out Paula's strengths and stabilized her family.
6. She moved her catering company to a small restaurant at a Best Western motel in Savannah and finally opened her first restaurant, The Lady and Sons, with Bobby and Jamie five years later.
7. The restaurant was a hit and the popularity of Paula and her cooking led to her first cookbook, 1998's The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.
8. This gave her fans the opportunity to try Paula's recipes at home and led to her first television appearance on QVC.
9. In 1999, USA Today food critic Jerry Shriver named The Lady and Sons "International Meal of the Year."
10. Paula's rise to stardom was underway, but when she premiered Paula's Home Cooking on the Food Network in 2002, she was on the verge of superstardom.
11. The network added Paula's Party in 2006, and Bobby and Jamie began making appearances with Paula on the programs.
12. The family that began delivering lunch-and-love-in-a-bag in 1989 had become one of the most recognized and beloved families in the country.
13. Paula is now a two-time Emmy Award winner.
14. In addition to her success on television, Deen is the author of 14 cookbooks that have sold more than 8,000,000 copies and her bimonthly magazine Cooking With Paula Deen has total readership of over 3,000,000 people today.
15. On New Year's Day 2011, Paula was the Grand Marshall of the Tournament of Roses Parade.
16. In 2011, Paula launched Paula Deen Foods, which includes sauces, spices, baking kits and more.
17. In 2014, Paula launched the Paula Deen Network, an interactive online cooking network that combines cooking, lifestyle and game shows with great recipes, meal-planning tools and more.
18. Paula is a member of the board of the Bethesda Home for Boys.
19. Launched The Bag Lady Foundation.
20. She is supporting issues of hunger which affect women and families across the country.
21. Deen resides in Savannah, Georgia, where she owns and operates The Lady & Sons restaurant with her sons, Jamie and Bobby Deen.
22. Though married since 2004 to Michael Groover, she uses the surname Deen, from her first marriage.
23. Deen was born Paula Ann Hiers in Albany, Georgia, the daughter of Corrie A. Hiers (née Paul) and Earl Wayne Hiers, Sr.
24. She grew up Baptist, and is still deeply devoted to her faith.
25. Her parents died before she was 23, and an early marriage ended in divorce.
26. In her 20s, Deen suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia.
27. She then focused on cooking for her family as something she could do without leaving her house.
28. Her grandmother Irene Paul had taught her the hand-me-down art of Southern cooking; one of the only places she felt safe was at her own stove, making thousands of pots of chicken and dumplings.
29. She later moved to Savannah, Georgia, with her sons. In 1989, she divorced her husband, Jimmy Deen, to whom she had been married since 1965.
30. Deen has appeared on QVC and on The Oprah Winfrey Show (first in 2002, twice in 2007 and once in 2010).
31. Her life story is featured in Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success (2007, Sourcebooks).
32. In April 2007, Simon & Schuster published Deen's memoir, It Ain't All About the Cookin'.
33. She launched a lifestyle magazine called Cooking with Paula Deen in November 2005, which claimed a circulation of 7.5 million in March 2009.
34. In 2004, Deen married Michael Groover, a tugboat captain in the Port of Savannah, Georgia.
35. The wedding was featured in a Food Network show in 2004.
36. Their wedding took place at Bethesda Academy in Savannah.
37. Paula is a supporter of Bethesda Academy, and asked Old Savannah Tours to donate $1 to the organization for each ticket purchased for the Paula Deen Store ticket sale.
38. In January 2012, she announced she has had type 2 diabetes for the last three years.
39. Deen made her film debut in Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst in 2005. She played the aunt of Bloom's character, and her cooking was featured. A
40. Food Network special, Paula Goes Hollywood, aired in conjunction with the film's premiere.
41. In June 2007, Deen won a Daytime Emmy Awards (Outstanding Lifestyle Host) for Paula's Home Cooking.
42. Deen's relationship with Food Network began in 1999, when her friend Erin Lewis introduced her to Gordon Elliott, who then introduced her to her then agent, Artist's Agency owner Barry Weiner. Elliott took her through the city for a series of Doorknock Dinners episodes.
43. She also appeared on Ready, Set, Cook!.
44. Deen was invited to shoot a pilot named Afternoon Tea in early 2001. The network liked it, and eventually gave Deen her own show, Paula's Home Cooking, which premiered in November 2002.
45. Paula's Home Cooking was originally taped in Millbrook, New York at the home of Gordon Elliott, the show's executive producer. Deen mentioned on the March 13, 2006, edition of The Daily Buzz that the next batch of episodes of her show would be taped at her home in Savannah, Georgia. According to the first of those episodes, actual production at her new Savannah home began in November 2005.
46. Since then, Deen has been given two more Food Network shows, Paula's Party and Paula's Best Dishes.
47. Paula's Party premiered on the Food Network in 2006 and Paula's Best Dishes debuted on June 8, 2008.
48. A televised biography of Deen was aired on an episode of the Food Network's Chefography program, in March 2006.
49. On March 11, 2015, it was announced that Paula Deen had officially kicked off her comeback with the launch of the all-new Paula Deen Channel on Roku.
50. On September 2, 2015, Deen was announced as one of the celebrities who will compete on the 21st season of Dancing with the Stars. She is paired with professional dancer Louis van Amstel.
Source: pauladeen.com, Wikipedia.org
