Ayesha Curry's Rise From Food Blogger to Culinary Wunderkind

From Oprah Magazine

Millennials get a bad reputation. The age group has been called lazy, entitled, and burnt-out brats that only focus on me-me-me. But if that's the case, then Ayesha Curry certainly is not this generation’s poster child.

During an hour-long OprahMag.com video shoot on a freezing, snow-capped New York City day, Curry only looked at her phone once. She wasn’t crafting a perfectly articulate 120-character tweet or morphing her face with a cute puppy filter to keep her 6.1 million Instagram followers updated. Instead, Curry gave every single person in the room-videographers, editors, publicists, and makeup artists-her full and undivided attention.

When our video producer yelled, “rolling!” Curry was only distracted by one thing: a firetruck. Seconds into her shoot, an espresso machine at the Starbucks next to set exploded-prompting Curry to rush to the window to check out the scene of firefighters, baristas, and flashing lights crowding the street corner.

“There’s sirens and everything, y’all!” she yelled with her hands pressed up against the window.

Everyone else was pretty much unbothered. (“I’d still blast emails through a fire,” one publicist admitted as she typed away on her iPhone.) But Curry-who lives in San Francisco with her Golden Warriors point guard husband, Stephen Curry, and their three children-marveled at the frenetic Manhattan energy outside. It was easy to envision her standing next to miniature versions of herself saying: Hey kids, look at the firefighters working! It’s gonna be okay.

The Canadian-born TV personality, New York Times bestselling author, chef, and culinary authority has reached Forbes 30 Under 30 status. But it’s her role as a young mother that makes her smile widen when she speaks. “I definitely never imagined I would have three whole children, so that’s been crazy," she says. "The saying life comes at you fast is so true."

Life for Curry has certainly changed at a lightning-speed pace this past decade. Now, in a sea of names ranging from Joanna Gaines and Jessica Alba to Martha Stewart and even, yes, Oprah, the 29-year-old millennial mom is the latest rising star in a growing world of celebrity-led lifestyle brands.

“When I really started diving deep into my career, I said I wanted to have a cookbook, I want to be on the Food Network, and within a year, I accomplished those goals,” she says. “It didn’t come without the hard work. There’s such an energy in voicing something. When you say it out loud, you’re then held accountable for the goals that you set.”

High school sweethearts, she and Curry (better known as "Steph") got engaged in 2010, and in 2011 the North Carolina natives married in a not-so-intimate ceremony of 420 guests in Charlotte. The kids soon followed: 6-year-old Riley was born in 2012, then came 3-year-old Ryan in 2015, and finally, Canon, now 7 months, arrived last July.

In the aughts, Curry made several TV appearances as an actress (Dan’s Detour of Life, Hannah Montana, Gary Unmarried), however, she found her professional footing as a cookbook author and lifestyle guru “innocently” once the responsibilities of motherhood and the need to put food on the table took center stage. It also helped that people in her inner circle couldn’t whip up a proper meal-and turned to her for advice.

“It's becoming a lost art-people gathering at home, having fun, building memories,” Curry says. “Growing up, that’s all we did on the weekends. We weren’t out at restaurants-we were at home in the comfort of our own space. I wanted to keep that alive.”

Curry’s rise in the food world reads like a YouTube-fueled Cinderella story. In 2014, she launched a blog,"Little Lights of Mine," where the then self-described “wife and mom” wrote and later uploaded homemade recipes for friends and family. A YouTube channel soon followed-which now boasts over 545,000 subscribers-and the clicks and viewership came with it. (An early video that went viral, in which she and Steph parodied Drake’s “0 to 100” song, had a little something to do with that growth; it now has over five million views.)

“Starting my blog was so scary! My husband is the one who encouraged me to do it,” says Curry. “I didn't know what the future would hold and was really just going with the flow and kind of doing what felt right and what I felt passionate about.”

It’s her fans, she says, that inspired her to turn vlogging into a full-fledged profession. “The viewership gave me the validation and the motivation that it could be an actual career path,” she says. “And getting the feedback that people were like, This is really delicious, thank you for giving me the recipe, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I’ve got something here.’”

Clearly, something was definitely there.

With a growing audience and impressive social media following (today, she has over 7.5 million followers across Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube), in 2016 Curry published her debut cookbook The Seasoned Life: Food, Family, Faith, and the Joy of Eating Well, which topped the New York Times bestseller list. In October 2016, Ayesha’s Home Kitchen premiered on the Food Network, a two-season gig that led to guest appearances on Chopped and Guy’s Grocery Games.

Curry tested the Joanna Gaines-style lifestyle market early on, collaborating with brands like Lundy Way on a line of aprons and Züpa Noma, a vegetable soup brand. She eventually launched Homemade, a lifestyle company that offers meal kit delivery services plus a roster of shoppable goods that range from cookware and kitchen essentials, to bedding, gardening tools, and jewelry. And earlier this month, Curry teamed up with GoDaddy to unveil the relaunch of shophomemade.com, Homemade’s flashy new “one-stop destination” site.

Oh, and in her space time? Curry is the owner of International Smoke, a San Francisco-based barbecue restaurant with locations in Houston and upcoming outposts in San Diego and South Florida. James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Mina is her chef and partner, and Barack Obama was her latest high-profile restaurant guest-no big deal.

Still, for Curry, it all goes back to family.

“There are moments when I kind of want to give all of this up and just be at home with my kids, but then I take that moment to breathe and realize this is beautiful,” she says. “What keeps me going is knowing that perfection doesn’t exist-and that’s okay. I try to find beauty in the chaos and thrive in it.”

She adds that while taking time away from her children can be difficult, she knows that she's just following her calling. “If you’re a stay-at-home mom and that’s what you love doing, that’s fine and great. But if you have a passion and you’re not going for it, I think you’re doing your children an injustice,” she says. “It’s important to show them there are no bounds. You can be a soft, unassuming mother and also a power businesswoman.”

That sky’s-the-limit mentality is what catapulted Curry from YouTube newbie to an accomplished entrepreneur, one reportedly worth upwards of $16 million. Now, Curry counts Alba, actress and founder of The Honest Company (for which Curry is a brand ambassador), Cuyana co-founder Shilpa Shah, and, of course, Oprah, among the high-powered women who inspire her.

“All women right now are just giving me such vibes. I love the fact that the social spectrum is changing to more unity. Women are empowering each other and lifting each other up, and that’s been so exciting for me.”

But don’t think Curry-who’s worked to brush off the assumption that she’s just another “NBA wife”-was been handed her successes on a silver platter. “I’ve had people laugh directly in my face before. I had to break down so many barriers and walls and assumptions about the type of person that I was before I even walked into a room,” she says. “Part of the dream and the hustle is plowing through the no’s to get to the yes's.”

She says that it’s her goal to get more women to pursue a culinary education-something she wishes she’d known was a possibility. But ultimately, she just wants women to follow their gut.

“I read Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and she said she hates when people ask children, ‘What do you want to become?’ That was such a bold statement for me, because we’re putting our kids into these little boxes they don’t need to be in,” she says. “Life is so short- enjoy it! And don’t feel like you have to jump into something. If you don’t know what you’re doing, that’s okay. Experiment, play around, and put out feelers. 30 is the new 21, you’ve got time.”

Before she headed off to celebrate the launch of her GoDaddy partnership-after a brief fire scare and video shoot, that is-Curry takes a moment to reflect, once again, on her children. Lately, she says it’s the world’s state of political and social unrest that’s making motherhood tough.

“Something that’s been really difficult for me with my girls is talking to them about the fact that they are beautiful, young African American girls. I tell them they are beautiful, their hair is beautiful, their freckles are beautiful,” says Curry. “It’s crazy at what an early age the negativity starts of them being aware of the differences between them and their classmates. It’s important for me to nip that in the bud and have them realize how beautiful their Blackness is.”

Despite her stressors, Curry-mom, millennial, serial entrepreneur-knows exactly how she'll unwind once the dust of this busy week settles. “Other than a prayer, I like a nice, extra-long warm bath with a glass of wine. The simple things are really where self-care comes into play.”

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