Rachael Ray Speaks out After House Fire and Apartment Flood

Rachael Ray is reflecting on some of the harder times she’s faced with her husband John Cusimano. The Rachael Ray Show host told Extra earlier this week that the two of them have learned another lesson in gratitude after some of the challenges they went through together –– including the loss of a family pet, a house fire, and an apartment flood. 

“When I lost my dog [Isaboo] I was so grateful that I could be with her the last several months of her life,” Ray said. “She died in my arms… I felt guilty and grateful at the same time… People suffered actual human loss from COVID or because they couldn’t get care… and how many people died alone.”

Ray shrugged off her upstate New York house fire incident, explaining, “the chimney burped under the roof, that’s just life.” She continued: “So many people wrote to me and reached out and said we lost so much too, I mean that’s just bad luck.”

If only the tough times ended there. Ray went on to talk about how her and her husband’s NYC apartment flooded in August due to Hurricane Ida. “We weren’t there,” she said. “Leaks became bigger and the roof became worse and we thought we had repaired everything… then Ida… the whole apartment, it was just raining inside.”

This isn’t the cooking expert’s first time discussing the string of disasters. She previously spoke with People regarding the flooding, saying, “We had finally just finished the work on making the [NYC] apartment over. And then, Ida took it out. And I mean, out. Down hard.”

“Like, literally every speaker in the ceiling, the fireplace, every seam in the wall… It was like the apartment just literally melted, like in Wicked or something,” she continued.

She also told People how badly her Lake Luzerne home was damaged by the fire last month. “The entire property was gone. There was nothing,” she said. “It was literally a hole in the ground. It was considered a 100% loss. And they cleared away the entire, everything. Took it all.”

Catastrophes aside, Ray is excited to return back to work on the sixteenth season of her daytime cooking show. She teases that the new set is made to look similar to her actual home with some of her own furniture. Though, she won’t always be on set as the series continues its hybrid model to allow her to work from home. “They tried to make it look less drastically different than my actual home, because this season is hybrid and we shoot in both… People seem to really like that,” she said. She added, “It’s great to have the energy of an audience again. I’ve felt wildly unpopular for 20 months because no one goes [starts clapping] when I walk into the room!” After going through all of her hardships of the last year, she says she’s just grateful for “being alive.”