Celebrity Chef Anne Burrell Blindsided by ‘Planning a Wedding’ at 51 Years Old (Exclusive)

Anne Burrell can confidently say she hasn’t “missed out on anything” in her life both personally and professionally. At 51-years-old, the celebrity chef is not only a huge success, she’s also now planning her first wedding. Burrell admits she never thought she would be doing something like this at her age, but it’s never too late. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, the celebrity chef opened up about her recent engagement and her efforts to raise donations to World Central Kitchen thanks to PepsiCo and Cheetos.

“[…] It was very exciting,” she said about her engagement to fiancé Stuart Claxton. “It was, it was I’m like, wow. I mean, I’m 51, I never would have thought in a million years, like, I would be thinking about planning a wedding at this state of my life, but I’m like alright here we are, the bride.” While she’s beaming with excitement now, the television personality admits that if she had met Claxton even a year ago, she probably wouldn’t have been ready.

“[…] I think even if I’d met my fiancé a year before I actually met him I don’t think I would have been personally ready. Like, I had stuff to do in my life before I could commit to a partnership with someone else, I was like, ‘I’ve got things I need to do.’” She added, “[…] I feel like I have had like this great fun life, like career and stuff and all that kind of stuff, and now it’s not that it’s gone, it’s that I’m ready to start a new chapter, and I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything in my life.”

Despite being in the public eye, Burrell put that behind her and dived into the dating pool. She signed up on the popular dating site Bumble and gave it a shot. Little did she know at the time, she would later walk away from the app with her fiancée. “It’s funny because yes, we did meet on Bumble, ’cause I was like I’m gonna put myself out there […].” She confessed to having “a lot of fun” in the process because “you don’t have to meet every person that you talk to” but thankful for those she otherwise would have probably never even met had she not signed up in the first place.

While that was a “fun experience” for the chef, Burrell is thrilled to be planning her wedding. While that’s an exciting process on it’s own, she’s incredibly aware that there are thousands of families who are struggling at the moment to put food on the table, which is why she teamed up with PepsiCo and Cheetos. PepsiCo is launching MoreSmilesWithEveryBite.com which is an online hub of family-friendly recipes, and to launch it, Cheetos is debuting an exclusive cookbook, BON-APPE-CHEETOS: A Holiday Cookbook by Chester & Friends. Burrell will feature some of her recipes in there and in return, fans can snag their own copy after making a donation to World Central Kitchen. For more on your favorite celebrities, keep it right here at PopCulture.com.