Born: February 21, 1948 in Pola, Italy (now Pula, Croatia)

Age: 68

Known for: Hosting the PBS television programs Lidia’s Italy in America, Lidia Celebrates America, Lidia’s Italy, Lidia’s Family Table, and Lidia’s Italian–American Kitchen. She is also a restaurateur and prolific cookbook author.

Fun Fact: During her teens she briefly worked at a bakery in Astoria, Queens owned by Christopher Walken’s father. She cooked three meals for Pope Benedict XVI during his April 2008 visit to New York City.

Bio: Lidia was born in Pola, Italy which became Yugoslavia in Fall of 1947 and is now a part of Croatia. After nine years in Yugoslavia, the family fled to Trieste, Italy due to political difficulties in Pola. Despite her mother and father both finding work, the family lived in a refugee camp. Two years later, Lidia’s family emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in Queens, New York.

Upon her graduation from high school, Lidia worked full time at a pizzeria on the Upper West Side. When she was 16 she met her former husband, Felice Bastianich, and they married three years later. In 1971 they opened their first restaurant in Queens called Buonavia. Lidia began training as the assistant chef and learned enough to cook the dishes on her own. With the success of Buonavia, they opened a second restaurant, Villa Secondo, where Lidia began to give live cooking demonstrations. When Bastianich’s father died they sold the restaurants, moved to a brownstone on the Upper East Side, and opened the critically-acclaimed restaurant Felidia, a contraction of their names.

In 1993, Lidia’s son Joe Bastianich convinced her to partner with him to open Becco, which was an immediate success. Also in 1993, Julia Child invited Lidia onto her show Julia Child: Cooking with the Master Chefs, in which the premier chefs prepared dishes in their homes. This television appearance inspired Lidia to expand her own commercial interests, and in 1998 she started hosting her own cooking show on PBS. Since then, she has hosted five television shows, owned seven restaurants, and written 13 cookbooks. In 1997, Her and her son Joseph created a brand of wine called Bastianich with wineries in Friuli, Udine and then expanded with Mario Batali in Maremma in 2001. In 2010, she launched Lidia’s Kitchen, a line of cookware and server ware, on QVC. She also started Nonna Food’s with her daughter and son in-law which introduced her line of LIDIA’S pastas and sauces.

Why she inspires us: Lidia came from Italy at age 12 with nothing but her family. They had to create a new life, and Lidia credits Catholic Charities for giving them the resources they needed to survive. The organization helped them find a home and helped her father find a job. They gave her a chance to succeed in America and she did not take that chance for granted.

Lidia combined her Italian roots and her love for authentic Italian food to create an empire that now dominates the culinary world — Italian and otherwise! She leveraged the success of her first restaurant to create an irresistible brand that now extends across television cooking shows, cookbooks, multiple international restaurants, a wine company, vineyards in Italy, cookware, and nationally distributed food products.

In 2012, Lidia gave back to Catholic Charities by helping with their Hurricane Sandy Relief efforts.