Sandra Lee Says ‘Heartbreak’ of Andrew Cuomo Split and Cancer Battle Will ‘Fuel and Feed’ Her Future
Andrew Cuomo uttered mystery remark to ex Sandra Lee that ended relationship, famous chef reveals
Sandra Lee claims a comment ex-boyfriend Andrew Cuomo made to her in the spring of 2019 was the straw that broke the camel’s back in their then-deteriorating relationship.
“I was in my kitchen,” she told Us Weekly in a cover story published Tuesday, “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.”
The TV chef, 58, refused to elaborate on the remark, simply saying, “He knows what it is; I know what it is.”
Cuomo, for his part, told the outlet he did not see Lee during this time period.
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.
She said Cuomo, 66, had grown increasingly distant during their relationship, and in 2015 he even missed most of her birthday following her double mastectomy as she battled breast cancer.
Page Six reported in May 2019 the two were no longer living together amid rumors they split up, but reps for both Lee and Cuomo denied at the time they had broken up.
Then in September 2019, the two finally acknowledged their relationship came to an end.
She told US Weekly the last ten years have been the “most challenging decade of my life.”
Lee was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1966, the daughter of Vicky Svitak and Wayne Waldroop, who had been high-school sweethearts.
When Sandra was two, her mother sent her, along with her younger sister, Cindy, to live with their paternal grandmother, Lorraine Waldroop.
In 1972, after divorcing Wayne, Lee’s mother moved with her girls to Sumner, Washington, where they acquired a new stepfather, whose last name (Christiansen) Lee took. Vicky had three additional children in the 1970s: Kimber, Richie, and John Paul.
Due to her mother’s illness and the absence of her and her siblings’ fathers, Lee effectively raised her four younger siblings.
In her youth, Lee learned how to feed her younger siblings frugally with a combination of food stamps and welfare payments, an experience that informed her future approach to cooking.