Ray took another PR hit when racy photos of her were printed in FHM magazine. Ray's mother was furious, but Ray said she was proud.

"I think I was 35 at the time," she said. "And I thought about it for a while, and I said, 'You know what? This magazine has as young as 17-, 18-year-olds in hottie bikinis, and these are all actresses, models, pin-up girls. I don't belong to any even remote club of theirs.'

"And I thought, 'If I'm gutsy enough to do this, this is a good thing for everybody. This is the everywoman, here she is,' she added. "And I did it, and it was the most scared I've ever been, and I wouldn't change a thing. I'd do it again tomorrow."

Ray has faced plenty of public criticism, especially on the Web.

"Television itself is an intimate medium," she said, explaining why it doesn't hurt her feelings. "It's in your house. You're visiting with these people. ... Not everybody's going to like it, just like not everybody likes everybody on the playground. I mean, that's life -- especially if your job is to just go out there and be yourself.

"If you spend so much time thinking about the people who dislike what it is you're doing, you're doing a disservice to the people that employ you," she said. "I'm not employed by those people. I work for the people that want the type of food I write [about], the type of food we share with people."

But Ray seems completely comfortable with her role in the kitchen -- funny, relaxed and even humble. She maintains that anyone could have done what she's done. Does she really believe that?

"I absolutely 100 percent believe that," she said. "I'm a waitress from upstate New York. Anyone that likes chatting, that likes to cook, certainly. Could have happened to anybody."

A waitress atop an empire. A syndicated daytime talk show, four hit food network shows, 16 bestselling cookbooks, a self-titled monthly magazine, and her own brands of dog food, olive oil, and even a line of pots and pans.

Part of her success is making cooking as easy as possible -- with short-cuts, including using chicken stock from a can and pasta sauce from a jar.

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Labels: Celebrities and Food, Entertainment