I’m trying not to take this onslaught of celebrities sharing how much they get done between 3-7am personally, but the struggle is real. I understand that people tend to fall into one of two camps, early bird or night owl, and I’m also aware that some studies say there are people who simply need less sleep. I grew up with one of those people, an early bird who functioned on fairly little sleep. My father, like Dolly Parton (first time I’ve uttered that statement), would wake up in the wee hours and pretty much get a whole day’s work in by the time my mother and I, night owls, would be rising for the day. It was hard not to feel like a schlub by comparison. Rachael Ray is among that anointed, productive crowd, as she described to People Mag while chatting up a new partnership with A&E:
Rachael Ray has been cooking up something big.
Ray’s production company, Free Food Studios, formed a partnership with A&E Networks. The deal will bring “in the kitchen” content and various new shows from both Ray and other talent over the next two years.
The project means Ray, 55, is having a hard time finding a moment to relax — but she’s just fine with that.
“I’m not really good with downtime. I love to work. I love it. I love to have my brain very active, and if I’m not writing shows, I’m drawing ‘foodles’ I call them — recipes on paper — and writing books and things,” the iconic television cook tells PEOPLE. “I don’t like being idle. I’ve never been good at it.”
She even jokes that she wrote “120 pages” of one of her cookbooks on her honeymoon. “I really am bad at doing nothing!” she says proudly.
Ray says she starts as early as 3 a.m.
“I can’t sleep. I wake up at three or four in the morning, and I just start working because I can’t stop thinking about it,” she says. “I’m not very good at sleep. I never have been. Even when I was a little girl. My nickname was Little Hoot because I was a night owl.”
Her husband of over 20 years, John Cusimano, prefers a little more R and R. “He loves to sleep. Unfortunately, once I get up and turn all the lights on and start typing and turn the coffee on, he’s forced to get up pretty early, too,” Ray quips. “He’s usually up between five and six…The other morning he said, ‘You realize it’s three o’clock in the morning, right?’”
Another main reason Ray likes to stay hyperactive is that she’s always curious about trying out new things and taking on reimagined business ventures.
“I’m always game for anything, and I’m a person who’s over 50 years old. I’m trying to still remain relevant, which is an honor,” she says. “It’s cool to be over 50 and get new opportunities that keep getting thrown at me.”
Real question here: do Rachael and her husband live in a studio apartment now? Why is she turning on the lights in the bedroom if he’s still sleeping? At the very least she could flip them on for getting dressed and then turn them back off when she’s done. And is the coffee being made in the bedroom?! Why must he be forced to wake up at the same time?! My vehemence stems from empathy!! Rachael may start her day before daybreak, but she should leave the hubby to his own circadian rhythm. Also, is it me or was that quip about her honeymoon a little rough? Not working doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. Rachael and John have been married for nearly 20 years, though, so if they butt heads I’m sure they’ll have one of their signature vents and move on. As for her new A&E shows, she’s working on one where she’ll be cooking from her home in Italy. I’m gonna need several boxes of pasta handy when that airs.
Photos credit: Erik Nielsen/Media Punch/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images and Getty
I’m an early bird (up by 5:30) thanks to my dogs and cat. I let my husband sleep longer-I think that’s weird she’s waking him up. My “productivity” however consists of sitting on the couch reading Celebitchy with a big cup of coffee.
LOL! Me too @MaryContrary, me too (except I stand/sit at my PC as I don’t have a laptop and my phone’s screen is too small.
I’m cheers-ing you with my second cup of coffee! And it’s now 6:38 here-Mr. Contrary is emerging for work-lol.
My husband starts his day earlier than I do.
He grabs his clothes and gets dressed in our walk in closet. He then goes downstairs and does his morning stuff. I don’t wake up.
CUZ HES NOT AN INCONSIDERATE AH. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.
also – he looks tired as hell.
I think it’s weird she wakes him up too.
I’m the opposite of a morning- I’m a night owl. Due to bouts of insomnia I struggle to fall asleep. But I would never intentionally wake up another person when I’m pottering around late night. Which I feel like would be the night owl equivalent of what she’s doing.
My significant other gets up earlier then me. Like he does give my pet bunny brekkie because he wakes up before I do. (Which I personally find adorable). They just have brekkie in the lounge room. If he was routinely waking me up for no good reason… it’d stress me out so much I’d leave him if he didn’t stop doing it.
Like I’m assuming they have plenty of rooms in the home. And it’s not like they live in a tiny one bedroom apartment so there’s no way of her doing stuff without waking up her husband. I don’t get it.
I’m not sure what their NY home situation is, but go check out the house they bought and renovated in Tuscany. It’s the most beautiful, charming home I’ve ever seen.
That was a great show – watching them re-do the house in Tuscany. But it DID make me wonder about their marriage, the way the marriage was portrayed in that show – if they fought that much on camera, what was going on behind the scenes? In that house, there is a kitchen attached to their bedroom, as well as one downstairs. My sister and I were horrified thinking about how your sheets would start to smell like bolognese or roasted garlic…
She treated everyone awfully on that FYI show. Her husband was treated pretty well compared to her poor designer. That designer took all her abuse and he just laughed it off as “oh that’s just Rachel being the perfectionist”. Sorry, no one deserves to be treated like that over a bathroom design or the lack of kitchen cabinets.
I was completely neutral on Rachel Ray until I tried to watch the Tuscan renovation show. She was so horrible to everyone on the show I couldn’t make it past the first episode.
All I can think about when I see this woman is how awful she is to people IRL. I worked in retail many many moons ago and she came into my store. She was AWFUL to the woman who was helping her and awful to the cashier and awful to the other customers in the store who recognized her. Literally the entire store couldn’t stop talking about how rude and mean she was.
And she wakes her husband up at an ungodly hour. She is definitely rude.
There must be something wrong with her brain. Can’t sleep, hyperactive, has to do something non stop. Her poor husband. She is ruining his health by not letting him sleep.
She sounds like an insufferable asshole – constantly anxious and inconsiderate of others and fake perky about all of it.
And the lack of sleep isn’t really working for her. I saw her on a show recently and was surprised when they said she was Rachel Ray. I’d been wondering if the woman on the screen was ill.
Learning to rest is a skill that a lot of people aren’t taught in our society or in this day and age. Constantly pushing your body and mind is not a thing to be celebrated or glorified. (And her share comes across a lot differently than Dolly’s)
I refuse to watch anything she’s in because I’ve read too many stories about her treating people like sh*t.
This makes me so sad because she’s always been one of my favorite celebrities. She’s the reason I started cooking. I was in a weird place after college (living back at home, working as a FT nanny to my autistic nephew as my sister was either in jail or rehab, I can’t recall which at the time) and watching her shows and cooking helped me feel like more myself again.
But it sucks to hear she’s awful IRL.
Bragging about being a workaholic.
She has always seemed so phony to me.
And her cutesy “sammies” schtick, Ugh.
I’ve never been able to stand her. So annoyingly perky.
I find Rachel Ray exhausting to watch, especially in the shows with her husband. She interrupts him incessantly. I’m not sure why you bring him on the show if you don’t want him to finish a sentence.
I’d divorce her so hard I’d probably only leave with my clothes. WTF wakes their spouse up just because you like to wake up before dawn???
Not being able to sleep is not a flex. I think she’s trying to convey how excited she is about her projects and how much she loves to work. Instead, it’s coming across as a highly anxious person who needs to constantly work in order to distract herself from… something.
Two antiquated viewpoints that she is endorsing here are:
1. The glorification of being busy. Hustle culture. Not being able to sit still for a second because you are so busy.
2. Acting as if being over 50 is some horrible thing and that aging is bad.
All this did was make me feel sympathy towards her.
I thought the same thing. She sounds highly anxious and unable to sit with herself with a peaceful mind. She is running from something. Being wide awake at 3 am isn’t being an early bird, in my opinion, it’s being an insomniac. Sleep is healthy and essential to our well-being, both physical and mental.
Yeah, it sounds like anxiety more than anything. I wake up at 3 am most mornings and am wide awake for an hour, but its anxiety, not because I’m well rested. I have a friend who gets up at 4 or 5 am every morning for basically the same reason. She just can’t sleep anymore bc of her mind going. the difference between us is that I stay in bed and eventually fall back asleep (and then wake up again at 630 exhausted bc of my sleep cycles) and she just gets up.
There’s a subset of larks who think they’re very special because they get up early and get things done, when really they just benefit from being in a society that’s built around their schedules. If things were built for night owls, they’d be struggling as much as we do lol.
I’ve been forced into being a morning person because of my job, but my productivity mode remains in the evening. Gym, writing, projecting, etc. I’m not motivated to do any of it until the clock strikes 5pm, and that’s fine. It still gets done, doesn’t it? And I’m not waking anybody up!
I’ve really never understood why being someone who wakes up early is glorified in so many societies. I am neither an early bird nor a night owl so I can’t claim any sort of flex, I just stumble through life often feeling quite tired!
It almost sounds like she has a bad case of ADHD.
Waking up between 3 and 4 consistently is typically caused by anxiety. I used to think my anxiety was excitement for the upcoming day, but it turns out no I was just anxious 😂 I would’ve left the third time she turned all the lights on and woke me up and never come back, that’s so unnecessary.
I don’t think I waded into the separate bedrooms debate, but this is a separate bedroom situation. It makes me livid to have my sleep schedule messed with.
Question here about anxiety! I wake up many days a week at 4:00 AM! Ugh. I don’t feel anxious IRL, so can someone shed some light on the “it’s anxiety if you are waking up between 3:00 and 4:00 AM” comment? I’m not being snarky. I really am trying to figure out why I am having this problem. Thank you for any and all insight as I try to unravel my sleeping problem!
How long has this been going on? What time do you intend to get up? Circadian rhythms do naturally shift earlier with age but that’s pretty dramatic unless you’ve always been a really early bird. Are you waking up at 4 feeling rested? How many hours are you getting total?
Mid-night awakenings are caused by not sleeping deeply enough. Far and away the main cause is stress or anxiety. If you’re waking up sweaty and out of breath then you should get checked for apnea. They can test you for apnea in your own bed with a machine you bring home.
Otherwise, the standard sleep-hygiene tips are to keep the bedroom cool, dark, quiet, and use it only for sleep and sex. Follow a consistent sleep schedule even on weekends and vacations. Avoid caffeine for six hours before bed. Avoid alcohol for four hours before bed. Avoid all liquids for two hours before bed. Avoid screen time for an hour before bed. Follow a consistent wind-down routine for the hour before bed.
Hi there! I have episodes of waking up between 3 and 4 and they usually happen when I am either really worried about something, or ate too late or had alcohol. There can be many reasons for those. I bought a couple of books about sleep hygiene, which I recommend, then I started doing more sports, which radically improved my sleep situation. Recommend that even more. Doesn’t have to be something dramatic.
What also really helps me is not to eat late, not to eat heavy in the evening/afternoon, not to drink alcohol. Either of those can trigger the 4am party.
As can worrying, because i’m changing jobs and it’s scary.
Hope that any of these help, good luck to you!
@Grace- waking at 3/4/5 is commonly associated with depression. In that scenario, it’s the body in survival mode and trying to make sure you don’t just die in your sleep. Ask me how I know lol. Might be worth looking into. Take care <3
Yeah, this is why I stay single.
An understandable reaction.
On the other hand: don’t let arśeholes like her keep you from having fun. Mr Brainfog and I are on vastly different schedules and it’s very very rare that one of us accidentally wakes the other up. Doesn’t take much effort not to be as inconsiderate as her.