She admits to a big regret in life: the time she told her son Jamie that she hated him. That’s on page one.
The business of being Paula Deen, “the strange-talking, middle-aged, feisty, butter-wielding, mayo-spreading woman,” does not begin and end at the kitchen stove, of course. In addition to her two Food Network Shows—“Paula’s Home Cooking” and “Paula’s Party”—there is the magazine Cooking with Paula Deen, five cookbooks, a restaurant she co-owns with her younger brother, Bubba—and, of course, the place that started it all for the once agoraphobic, divorced mother of two, The Lady and Sons in Savannah, Ga. She is also the matriarch to an ever-expanding family, including her new grandson, Jack, to whom she dedicated her book. “He’s granny’s future,” she says proudly, but congested from a cold that had her talking on the phone from bed. And what does Paula Deen eat when she suffers from a bug? Some really good homemade chicken soup? She was having some country-fried steak to chase that cold away. And to go with it? “We got us some rice and gravy, squash casserole and cornbread.” Mother always said to feed a cold and Deen’s not one to argue with that.
The tale of two Paulas begins in Albany, Ga., where Deen grew up happily with her parents and grandparents. She was popular and would have made a career out of cheerleading if it paid. At 18 she married Jimmy Deen and by 23, she was a mother of two sons, Jamie and Bobby. The bloom came off the magnolia quickly when Jimmy’s drinking became a problem. Though the two wouldn’t divorce until 27 tumultuous years later, the ex-Mrs. Deen has only kind words to offer about the man with whom she used to verbally spar: “He was a good man, but he was pulling in one direction and I was pulling in the other,” she says. She would ultimately take off running in that other direction, but there was a 20-year-long roadblock she had to go through first. Deen’s beloved daddy died in 1966; her momma followed four years later. With her marriage souring and her parents gone, she began to sink further and further into a black hole of fear that she didn’t understand. It was agoraphobia and it took over her life. Worried that she or her children would be the next to die, Deen resorted to what she knew: cooking. Within the confines of her house, safely away from the outside world, she cooked and cooked every Southern recipe her grandmother had taught her. Little did she know it was also to be her salvation. “I just got very tired of being sick and tired,” says Deen of her lowest points where she wouldn’t even leave her bed. “I said, ‘This can’t be the best that there is. It just can’t be.’ For years I didn’t want to talk about it. I just put up a front and tried my best to hide it from everybody.” After that moment of clarity—and at 42 years old—Deen started a small business with her sons selling sandwiches to the Savannah business crowd at lunch. The Bag Lady was born, and the roadblock disappeared. From there, it was an open highway full of serendipitous meetings, flying by the seat of her pants and hard work. A lot of hard work. “As hard as a dog,” she says of those seemingly endless days and nights. “I made a commitment to work, yet I really had no idea what I was working towards, but I had made the commitment.”
How committed was she? Deen self-published a cookbook, which led to a book deal; opened a restaurant, which led to a bigger restaurant, Savannah’s shining star, The Lady & Sons. A meeting with TV host and producer Gordon Elliot led to Deen’s hosting “Door Knock Dinners” on the Food Network, which led to her own show, “Paula’s Home Cooking.” That show launched in 2002, followed by “Paula’s Party” in 2006. As Deen puts it in her book, she was “busier than a one-armed paper hanger on a windy day.” Paula-isms like that are all over her memoir, which is written in the same manner that Deen speaks: it’s all fixin’, cookin’ and weddin’—which is actually more charmin’ than annoyin’ when read. Deen has come full circle in many ways. “I’m as close to that 18-year-old girl right here tonight as I’ll ever be,” says Deen. Then she added, “Only I like the woman I am better now.” Deen represents the pre-“American Idol” American dream: the one where you roll up your sleeves and don’t stop working until you either do it or die trying. Paula Deen did it and she wouldn’t trade anything for her journey now, or all the butter that’s come with it.
