Ten years ago, Sandra Lee had it all: a woman raised in poverty who’d become a massively successful entrepreneur, starring in her Emmy-winning TV show, Semi-Homemade Cooking. The upbeat queen of pantry hacks, 58, was also the longtime partner of handsome and dynamic politician Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York. And then her life — a seemingly perfect mix of elegance and suburban sensibility akin to her iconic tablescapes — derailed rapidly.
First came the breast cancer diagnosis in March 2015, resulting in a double mastectomy and full hysterectomy. Lee’s ongoing cancer treatment left her unable to continue her hit TV series, and it ended later that year after 15 seasons. Still, the worst was yet to come. In 2019, her relationship with Cuomo, 66, imploded, landing the fiercely private Lee in the middle of a prolonged and very public scandal. As photographers documented every step of the end of that relationship, Lee fled New York for L.A. and withdrew from public life.
“When I got sick, I was so stressed out and overwhelmed that when the Food Network canceled me, I didn’t have the energy to fight them,” Lee tells Us Weekly of the fate of Semi-Homemade.
The woman who sits down with Us in the living room of her Malibu home is a far cry from the Sandra Lee of old. Gone is the perky 50s throwback kitsch that defined Semi-Homemade. In its place is someone who’s gone through hell and come out happier, determined and more authentic. Now she’s finally strong enough to talk about what happened. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never get over the heartbreak of loss of the last 10 years,” she says wistfully. “The grief has been endless but I will use it to fuel and feed me and make me wiser and stronger.”
Lee pauses to sip her (made from scratch!) iced tea, her makeup-free face radiant in the natural light. She stares out of her window, tears in her eyes, as she takes in the view: the Pacific Ocean sparkling calmly as a pod of dolphins makes its way up the coast. “I would say,” she continues, finally, “that I’ve had the most challenging decade of my life.”
Dark Times
To call her assessment an understatement is putting it mildly. But the Sandra Lee of today is ready to get back to the business of living. She has two new TV series, Dinner Budget Showdown on Roku and Blue Ribbon Baking Championship premiering August 9 on Netflix. She also just celebrated her third anniversary with Ben Youcef, a handsome younger man who swept in and taught Lee to love — and to trust — all over again.
It wasn’t easy. Cuomo, who appeared as a devoted and supportive partner in Lee’s documentary about her cancer treatment, could apparently be a different person behind the scenes. Increasingly distant, he spent more and more time apart from Lee. A spokesperson for Cuomo tells Us: “Governor Cuomo has always been totally supportive of Sandra through good times and bad. She partnered with him, spent time with [his] girls, and handled functions as first lady very well. Sandra and the Governor had separate and busy lives and grew apart over time. Breakups are always difficult and there are always two sides of the story, but the Governor chooses to focus on the positive and he wishes her nothing but success and happiness in the years ahead.”
Many celebrities have spoken out about their personal battles with breast cancer over the years. Julia Louis-Dreyfus went public with her breast cancer diagnosis in September 2017 via Instagram. Nearly one year later, she had successfully beaten the illness and returned to work on Veep. “It sounds kind of corny, but there’s something about after […]
Lee’s self-described lowest point came during the day of her birthday in 2015 following her double mastectomy.
“Cancer is aggressive and tricky, and it hides and waits,” Lee says of her battle with the disease, which she was diagnosed with that same year. “I had to spend a year dealing with that, as aggressively as I could.”
In cancer treatment, any birthday is significant, a marker of personal success against the disease. “I spent the day by myself. I was sitting on my lawn alone,” Lee says. (Cuomo denies this and says he cleared his schedule to be there.) “My birthday was a precious day to me, especially that one. I’m not someone who feels sorry for themselves, but that day was a bit much for me.” Lee adds he eventually came home and they went out for dinner, but the damage was done.
Their relationship continued to deteriorate. In spring 2019, Cuomo made a remark, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I was in my kitchen,” she recalls, “and he said something, and the minute he said it, I knew what he’d just said. And every window and door closed. And that was it.” Lee’s commitment to integrity makes it impossible for her to reveal what was actually said. “He knows what it is; I know what it is,” she tells Us, refusing to elaborate further. Cuomo says that he did not see Lee during this time period.
Breaking Point
After enduring the media coverage of the split — a humiliating time that Lee will only describe as “s–tty” — another tragedy rocked her world. A beloved uncle on the West Coast became terminally ill, and Lee immediately devoted herself to caring for him. “My job was to buy him time,” she says. “And I did.” Lee made sure to get much of her uncle’s bucket list accomplished before he succumbed to his illness, and his December 2023 death, though immensely painful to her, also proved cathartic.
“I went into the bathroom and just started throwing up,” she says quietly. “I think that was my body just purging that five years of time.” Lee pauses. “Actually, that had to be the lowest point of my life, leaning over a toilet, vomiting from sadness and grief.”
Around this time, after stepping up so courageously during the pandemic, her ex Cuomo’s life and career fell apart amidst numerous accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior with female staffers. (Cuomo denied the allegations and stated that any suggestion he was unfaithful to Lee was false.) The controversy became a media snowball as the allegations piled up, ultimately ending his tenure as governor. The scandal brought Cuomo and Lee’s breakup back into the spotlight, and the renewed attention threatened to engulf her. When asked about the allegations, Lee takes the high road, refusing to speculate on what happened.
Lee still refuses to discuss her painful split from Cuomo in detail, saying only, “When you live separate lives, you are not creating a life together.”
Dream Man
Sandra Lee and Ben Youcef attend Elton John AIDS Foundation’s 32nd Annual Academy Awards Viewing Party in March 2024. Dia Dipasupil/WireImage
For Lee, there was a light at the end of the tunnel: In the midst of the turmoil, she found love. “Meeting Ben was incredible,” Lee enthuses. “It was the perfect intersection of timing and chemistry.” Still, she was “terrified” of beginning anything and it took months before anything happened with Youcef. “I hadn’t been intimate in years and years. I literally felt like a virgin at 55,” says Lee, “and I just didn’t want to get involved again.”
Youcef, 46, was gentle and persistent, not even attempting to kiss Lee until they’d been dating for two months. “He finally kissed me and I stood there stone-still,” Lee recalls. “He kept his lips on mine, and my mind just went blank. I still didn’t kiss him back.”
When Lee called him the following day to apologize for her odd behavior, Youcef brushed it aside. “He waited and persisted, and here we are,” she says with a grin, adding that she no longer has any problems when it comes to intimacy. “My chemistry with Ben is something that I’ve never had before,” she says. “It’s mental, it’s emotional, and it’s a connection that I can’t even describe.”
The connection is signified by the commitment rings that the couple wear. When asked to contrast Youcef with Cuomo, she thinks for a minute before answering. “Ben is very patient, and he’s very transparent,” she says finally. “He checks in all the time, and shares everything with me. He loves helping people without agenda or motive. He truly tries to be a better human every day.”
Sweet Spot
With the romantic side of her life under control, Lee turned her attention back to TV. Her latest project, Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, is a cooking competition set in the cutthroat world of state fair baking contests. The idea first came to Lee 12 years ago, inspired by her own experiences as a blue-ribbon-winning baker at the 1992 Los Angeles County Fair. “These people are the most competitive in the nation,” she says. “We combed the nation for the best bakers in the United States. One woman, Eileen, has 700 ribbons!”
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On top of Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, Lee is back in full swing, with, fittingly, “a baker’s dozen” other projects in various stages of development. And at the end of the day, she miraculously can look back at the past 10 years with positivity and optimism. “We all go through pain and hurt,” she says. “You’re either at the beginning, the middle or the end of hurt and pain. It’s life. It’s a cycle. And then you get these amazing runs of happiness that make it all worth it,” she pauses, searching for the right words. “My life was a nightmare that slowly turned into a dream.”
As Lee returns to the public eye, she has a new mantra from an unlikely source. “I learned some life management techniques from Taylor Swift,” she says with a laugh. “I check in with myself often, actually talk to myself. ‘Is it OK with you, Sandy? Does this work for you? Have you made this mistake before?’”
As the interview winds down, Lee is relaxed and at peace. When asked if there’s anything she’d like to leave readers with, her answer is instant. “Loving,” she says with a huge smile, “makes life worth living.”
For more on Sandra Lee, watch the exclusive video above and pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly — on newsstands now.
With reporting by Amanda Williams
