When asked about the tragedies that have recently befallen her during the pandemic, Rachael Ray actually stated she felt "grateful." One of the tragedies even involved a fire on her New York property.

During the last two years, natural catastrophes have had an impact on the chef's New York City apartment as well as her upstate New York house. The 53-year-Lake old's Luzerne home was destroyed by a chimney fire last summer, while her flat was destroyed by Hurricane Ida just a month before. Also in 2020, the celebrity chef had to deal with the death of her dog Isaboo.

"When I lost my dog I was so grateful that I could be with her the last several months of her life," Ray said in a recent interview with Extra.

She said, "[My dog] died in my arms ... I felt guilty and grateful at the same time ... People suffered actual human loss from COVID or because they couldn't get care ... and how many people died alone."

The celebrity foodie revealed that the coronavirus pandemic was particularly harsh on her, and yet somehow, put her life into perspective. "The fire, the chimney burped under the roof, that's just life," she explained.

"So many people wrote to me and reached out and said we lost so much too, I mean that's just bad luck ... The apartment, we weren't there ... Leaks became bigger and the roof became worse and we thought we had repaired everything ... then Ida ... the whole apartment, was just raining inside," Ray added.

After the fire destroyed her upstate New York house in August of 2020, she was quick to pen a thank you letter to the first responders who had worked so hard to put out the flames.

"Thank you to our local first responders for being kind and gracious and saving what they could of our home. Grateful that my mom, my husband, my dog ... we're all okay. These are the days we all have to be grateful for what we have, not what we've lost," she tweeted at the time.

A native of Glenn Falls, New York, Rachael Domenica Ray was raised by her Italian immigrant mother Elsa Providenza Scuderi and her American restaurateur father James Ray. When she was young, her parents instilled in her the importance of perseverance and hard work. Both her parents had her work as a waitress at their various restaurants with her two siblings, Maria and Manolo. They were basically reared as chefs, as the three children would later testify.