Today in history: Guy Fieri is born

American restaurateur, author, and an Emmy Award winning television presenter Guy Ramsay Fieri was born on 22 January 1968 in Columbus, Ohio, United States.

He co-owns three restaurants in California, licenses his name to restaurants in New York City and Las Vegas, Nevada, and is known for hosting various television series on the Food Network.

Fieri began his association with food in grade school in Ferndale, by selling pretzels from his “Awesome Pretzel” cart and washing dishes to finance his trip to France to study.

He attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Hotel Management in 1990.

After winning the second season of The Next Food Network Star on April 23, 2006, Fieri was awarded a six-episode commitment for his own cooking show on Food Network.

Guy’s Big Bite premiered on 25 June 2006 with the most recent episode airing on 16 November 2016.

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, his second series, premiered in April 2007 (a one-hour special aired in November 2006), with Fieri traveling the country visiting local eateries.

The New York Times called the series “not a cooking show as much as a carefully engineered reality show.”

In 2015, Fieri officiated at the wedding of celebrity chef Art Smith at Miami Beach.

The wedding, which included over two dozen same-sex couples, was held to celebrate Florida’s Supreme Court lifting the state ban on same-sex marriage.

Fieri owns a vineyard and sells his wine under the label Hunt & Ryde, named after his sons Hunter and Ryder.

Information sourced from: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia