Rachael Ray Opens Up About Marriage Drama & Getting ‘Really Angry’

Rachael Ray has been getting candid about her explosive marriage after previously admitting to needing time apart from her husband John Cusimano.

Last month, the celebrity cook told her I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead podcast listeners, “I am wildly, wildly lucky that I have my husband. But he understands I need my space. He needs his space. John and I largely stay in separate corners.”

She also revealed that she and Cusimano “have huge screaming matches all the time,” noting, “It’s very hard, especially for hot-tempered or creative or vociferous loud people to be able to just calm it down.”

On the latest edition of her podcast, released on Tuesday, November 26, Ray continued to open up about her marriage while speaking with best-selling author Harlan Coben.

“John and I… we don’t have any children. We have one dog at a time, and that’s about as much as we can handle. But I love my life with John because we are 50/50, because he enjoys being on his own and I enjoy being on my own,” Ray said.

John Cusimano and Rachael Ray; Rob Kim/Getty Images for NYCWFF

“I can write all day, and cook all day, and home-make all day. I love homemaking. I don’t have kids, but I love homemaking. I always found it so insulting when people say, ‘You don’t have children.’ So what, I make a nice home,” she continued.

She went on to say that while John is a lawyer, “he prefers to be a musician” and can “spend all day in the studio” making music. “He’s so filled with joy at the end of the day when he’s had a good day with his instruments and recording something. We’re separate, but that brings us together because we each have a little bit of space,” Ray stated.

However, she admitted that both she and John get angry easily. “If John writes a crap song, or he doesn’t like what he’s doing that day with music, or if he has a business meeting, he gets really mad,” she shared before confessing she is the same way.

“If I’m trying to do a recipe or I spend all this time writing something and I go back and read it over and I hate it, I feel like I’ve wasted all these hours and I get really angry,” the Food Network star added. “John and I are both that way, we just get grumpy.”

Rachael Ray and Harlan Coben; Sean Zanni/Getty Images

“That’s when I’m very dramatic,” Ray continued. “And, ‘How come you’re not here? Why don’t you ever just come downstairs? Can’t we just watch a movie or something?’ It’s just because I’m pissed at me or something that happened in my day, so I’m gonna let that expand and expound on that.”

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As for what calms Ray down, she said, “Books center me and make me calm, and that’s very hard to do.” She said she and John both have stacks of books on their nightstands on their side of the bed. However, even books can make her lose her cool, specifically, audiobooks.

The Rachael Ray in Tuscany host shared a story of recording an audiobook for her 2019 book, Rachael Ray 50: Memories and Meals from a Sweet and Savory Life: A Cookbook.

“I couldn’t get through it because they had edited it before I sat for the thing… I was so pissed that somebody messed with my words,” she explained. “I stormed out. It’s so embarrassing to admit that, but I did. And they were just trying to make the thing more popular… but I don’t like people messing with my stuff.”

Coben, who is good friends with Ray, has written over 30 novels, 12 of which have been adapted for film and television. He signed a multi-million dollar deal with Netflix in 2018 to adapt 14 of his novels; so far, this has included series such as Safe, The Stranger, Stay Close, Shelter, and Fool Me Once. His next Netflix series, Missing You, premieres on January 1, 2025.