{"id":7498,"date":"2025-10-18T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/7498\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:59:10","slug":"rachael-ray-reveals-why-she-prefers-living-in-italy-over-us-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/7498\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachael Ray reveals why she prefers living in Italy over US, NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Rachael Ray calls\u00a0New York City\u00a0home,<\/a> she\u2019s not the biggest fan of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

The former Food Network star, who has homes in the city, as well as upstate New York and Italy, admitted that while her husband, John Cusimano, prefers the hustle and bustle, she enjoys the quieter life in their Tuscan villa.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband loves being in New York,\u201d Ray told\u00a0Us Weekly<\/a>\u00a0in a new interview. \u201cAnd I tell him, \u2018Hey, go as often as you like, stay as long as you want.\u2019 I come to New York and upstate New York when I have work, I prefer Italy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quiet. The dog is much happier. She hates New York City. Bella is not a New Yorker at all. So, for the dog\u2019s sake, I spend as much time [in Italy] as I can. She has a swimming pool and 66 hectares to run around on, and everything is very quiet. And the air is very fresh, and we have huge gardens and a vineyard and olive trees. And I just prefer that life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray also chose Italy when she and Cusimano celebrated their 20th\u00a0wedding<\/a> anniversary\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to see some of our friends and [went] to our favorite restaurants in Florence and Rome,\u201d Ray told the outlet. \u201cWe live in Tuscany, so we can bop back and forth to both of those places pretty quickly. So we just \u2026 we were very chill this year. We had parties for 60 to 100 people over the decade, but this year we just went with us. Two nights in Florence, two nights in Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachael Ray arrives for a taping of \u201cThe Drew Barrymore Show\u201d in New York City on Oct. 15, 2025. BACKGRID<\/p>\n

John Cusimano and Rachael Ray attend the 2025 North Shore Animal League America Celebration of Rescue at Tribeca 360 in New York City, on June 12, 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n

In 2021, Ray revealed in her magazine, Rachael Ray In Season, that she\u2019d purchased the home in Tuscany the year prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m writing this just before I go to Italy for the first time in three years,\u201d she wrote in the magazine,\u00a0per People<\/a>. \u201cI love it there and have missed it. My mother\u2019s family and both of John\u2019s parents\u2019 families hail from there. My husband and I got married there. And three years ago, I achieved my life\u2019s goal of buying a property there, in Tuscany.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she and Cusimano bought the property, she said he called it a \u201cwar zone.\u201d It was two buildings without plumbing or electricity, and she recalled him asking, \u201cHoney, don\u2019t you want to look at a \u2026house?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I fell in love with the fields and the views, and I thought, for the money we\u2019d\u00a0pay for a house, we could build something that\u2019s really, truly ours,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Tuscany, the air smells different from any other place on earth I\u2019ve visited,\u201d Ray described. \u201cIt\u2019s sweet and filled with the scent of agricultural wonder. The olive trees, vineyards, fecund gardens, incredible landscapes and views \u2026 it overwhelms you, and it\u2019s what I\u2019ve missed the most \u2014 the air. The first time I went, 20 years ago, I felt it as soon as I touched the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, she starred in a limited\u00a0reality series\u00a0called \u201cRachael Ray\u2019s Italian Dream Home,\u201d detailing some of the renovation process. Last year, she began filming a new show, \u201cRachael Ray in Tuscany,\u201d focusing on Italian cuisine.<\/p>\n

Rachael Ray cooks during an event at the Grand Tasting Village in Miami Beach, Florida, on Feb. 22, 2025. WireImage<\/p>\n

Rachael Ray and John Cusimano celebrate their wedding in Montalcino, Italy, on Sept. 24, 2005. INFGoff.com<\/p>\n

While Ray seems to have no shortage<\/a> of praise for Italy, she told\u00a0The Post<\/a>\u00a0in April 2024 about some horrors she\u2019d experienced in New York City.<\/p>\n

In one story, she spoke about being mugged outside her apartment in Queens when she was younger, recalling, \u201cHe has literally a Glock in his hand and sticks it in my back, and I scream so loud. I think they heard it in Jersey. \u2026 I freaked the flip out, and I think I scared him more than he scared me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sprayed him in the face with mace, and he was not happy. I still feel really bad about it, actually. I don\u2019t think that child would have hurt me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, she said the mugger came back a second time because he was angry, and he pushed her down an alleyway but was chased off by a dog that lived in her building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were roaches in my apartment, but I stayed because I was so worried about the dog that lived there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Rachael Ray calls\u00a0New York City\u00a0home, she\u2019s not the biggest fan of the Big Apple. The former Food…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[290,157,4858,6548,9,24,11,10,6549,6550],"class_list":{"0":"post-7498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-celebrity-chefs","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-italy","11":"tag-moving","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-rachael-ray","17":"tag-rachel-ray"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}