Emeril Lagasse - Personal Life

Personal Life

Lagasse was born on October 15, 1959, in Fall River, Massachusetts to a Canadian Québécois father, John, and Portuguese mother, Hilda. He has distant relatives in Connecticut's New Haven county. He worked in a Portuguese bakery as a teenager where he discovered his talent for cooking and subsequently enrolled in a culinary arts program at Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School. His talents as a percussionist earned him a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music but he chose instead to attend Johnson & Wales University in hopes of becoming a chef. He met his first wife, Elizabeth Kief, while working at a restaurant called "Venus De Milo" to pay his way through school. He attended Johnson and Wales in 1978 and the school later awarded him a honorary doctorate.

In 1982 Lagasse succeeded Paul Prudhomme as Commander's Palace's executive chef.

After the birth of daughters Jessica and Jillian, Elizabeth Kief and Lagasse divorced. Lagasse married a second time to a fashion designer, Tari Hohn, but that too ended in divorce. Lagasse married a third time on May 13, 2000 to a real estate broker, Alden Lovelace. He and Lovelace had a son, Emeril John Lagasse IV, on March 2003, and a daughter, Meril Lovelace Lagasse, on December 10, 2004.

In 2010 as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Lagasse appeared in a commercial to raise awareness for the spill. Also starring in the commercial were Sandra Bullock, Peyton and Eli Manning, Jack Del Rio, Drew Brees, James Carville, Blake Lively, and John Goodman.

Lagasse revealed in an episode of Emeril's Originals that he was a drummer before becoming a chef, and that he still drums as a hobby.