The Truth About Bobby Flay's Ex-Wives

Most known for his slew of Food Network shows, Bobby Flay is the epitome of a celebrity chef. In addition to his numerous television and film appearances, primarily on the Food Network but also most recently appearing as Fred Jones' uncle in a 2018 Scooby Doo movie, he has owned a score of restaurants throughout the country and written several cookbooks.

For the past few years, Flay has been thought of by some as a ladies' man, it's a reputation that grows because of the amount of wives he has had and the women he has been linked to. There have been several celebrities that have allegedly been dated the famous chef, but in addition to all of his rumored and confirmed girlfriends, he's also been married three times, with his first marriage lasting just two years, his second resulting in the birth of his only child and his third ending in 2015 after 15 years together.

After authoring approximately 15 cookbooks, appearing on more than 20 Food Network shows, and owning numerous restaurant locations, it's safe to say that Bobby Flay, is one of the most well-known celebrity chefs around.

"Food is the epicenter of my life," Flay wrote on his website. "It's the way I make my living, the way I express myself and how I keep healthy. I communicate with the world through food."

Flay made his first appearance on the Food Network in 1994, and since then he has regularly hosted programs including Worst Cooks in America and Beat Bobby Flay, in which two chefs come on to win a chance to compete against Flay, creating the best dish that they can.

His professional life has been well documented through his appearances on the Food Network, and his personal life has been of growing interest as well. Flay most recently publicly dated actress Heléne Yorke from 2016 through 2019. Yorke is probably best-known for her starring role as Brooke on The Other Two and recurring role as Amy Breslin on The Good Fight, as well as starring as Glinda in a touring production of Wicked.

Prior to dating Yorke, Flay has been married three times, with his second marriage resulting in one daughter, Sophie Flay. In addition to his marriages, Flay has been linked to several women including Mad Men star January Jones and fellow chef Giada De Laurentiis.

As his career began to take off, Bobby Flay married fellow chef Debra Ponzek in 1991, when he was 26. The couple got engaged over lunch at An American Place, a restaurant that was located in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City, after just a few weeks of meeting each other in 1990, and he proposed with a pear-shaped diamond ring.

Ponzek was an engineering student at Boston University before dropping out to attend the Culinary University of America. Flay studied at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

The two chefs met when Bobby Flay was working at Miracle Grill, in New York City's East Village, but by the time they were married he had opened up his flagship restaurant, Mesa Grill, which closed its New York location in 2013.

Their wedding and reception were held at the Rainbow Room in New York City, according to a New York Times article, and included a multi-course meal served to the approximately 225 guests of the wedding was prepared by Andrew Wilkinson, who was the executive chef at the Rainbow Room at the time. For dessert, the couple had a vanilla and blackberry wedding cake made by Sylvia Weinstock, a New York City-based baker who has also made cakes for Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, according to a profile by The Times of Israel.

While Bobby Flay is ultimately one of the most famous chefs in the world, he wasn't the sole chef in his first marriage as his wife, Debra Ponzek, also worked as a chef at Montrachet, a restaurant owned by Drew Nieporent in New York City.

In fact, both Flay and Ponzek were up for a James Beard Foundation Award in 1992. Since 1991, the James Beard Foundation has held an award show and recognized inspiring and innovative chefs and restaurateurs, as well as authors and journalists who write about food. Ponzek ended up winning the Rising Star Chef award at the ceremony in 1992, and presented the award to Flay when he won the same honor the following year.

When they competed against each other in 1992, Flay attempted to withdraw his name from consideration, as he did not want to compete against his wife, but was told that the voting results could not be changed.

"Bobby called me asking to withdraw his nomination to not compete against Debra," said James Beard Foundation Awards Director Melanie Young in a story published by Eater about how the annual awards show came to be. "I told him, 'We can't change voting results.'"

After two years of marriage, Bobby Flay and Debra Ponzek divorced in 1993. It didn't take her long to find love again, as she married husband Greg Addonizio in April of 1995. The couple first met in 1984 while attending culinary school together.

After graduating from culinary school, Addonizio worked at The Pear Tree in Rumson, NJ, then Lavanos Restaurant in White Plains, NY before opening his own restaurant The Miramar Beach Inn in California, where he lived for seven years. When he moved back east, he saw his former classmate doing a cooking demonstration on a late-night TV show and reconnected with her.

Ponzek left New York when she married Addonizio and moved north to Connecticut. In 1995, she and her husband opened up Aux Delices, a restaurant, store and catering company based in their new state.

"After settling down with three kids in [Connecticut], it became apparent to us that many busy families (much like our own) often found it hard to consistently provide home-cooked meals while our kids were participating in all sorts of activities after school," Ponzek wrote on her company's website. "Our goal became providing delicious homemade food, made with healthy ingredients, that was easy to bring home to your family."

They now have four locations throughout the state in Riverside, Greenwich, Darien, and Westport.

Bobby Flay didn't stray too far when meeting his second wife, as they both were working on shows for The Food Network when they met in 1994. Kate Connelly was working as a cohost on Robin Leach Talking Food when she came across Flay, who appeared as a guest on the show while also working as the chef at two different restaurants in New York City, Bolo and Mesa Grill, according to a story about the wedding in The New York Times.

Connelly, who was a single mother at the time with a son, Jonathan, went on her first date with Flay at The Monkey Bar in New York City. Flay said the fact that she was a single mother was one of the reasons that he was attracted to her.

They were engaged a few months after the first date, and married October 1, 1995, at Flay's restaurant, Bolo.

Bobby Flay became a stepfather when he married second wife Kate Connelly in 1995, and then he became a father one year later when Connelly gave birth to daughter Sophie on April 16,1996 (via Delish).

Sophie, now 24, works as a community journalist for ABC7 in Los Angeles. For her work at ABC7, she's covered muralists who are honoring Kobe Bryant, Silver Lake neighborhood council meetings, Biden supporters in the Silver Lake neighborhood celebrating after it was announced he won the 2020 Presidential Election, and community fridges offering free food to struggling neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to her work for ABC7, Sophie Flay is a contributor to Localish, and co-hosts the show The Flay List with her Dad, in which they travel around New York City looking for the best local meals. She has also joined her dad on Beat Bobby Flay and Brunch at Bobby's.

Bobby Flay and Kate Connelly filed for divorce in 1998, just three years after marrying. Two years later he met actress Stephanie March, who was starring on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit at the time as Alexandra Cabot. March appeared in more than 90 episodes of the show, and even starred in a spinoff series, Conviction.

Her acting career began in 1997 when she played Arlene in an episode of Early Edition, a TV show starring Kyle Chandler that ran from 1996 until 2000. Her most recent role is Deb Green in the TV movie A House on Fire, which is currently in post-production.

March has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, although her most notable role to date was that of Cabot in the Law & Order universe. She has also had minor roles in 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, and Rescue Me.

Unlike his first dates with his previous two wives, Bobby Flay and Stephanie March were set up on a blind date in 2000. The couple had their first date at New York City's Nobu, the famed sushi restaurant owned by Nobu Matsuhisa, a Japanese celebrity chef. They dated for three years before Flay proposed in December 2003.

Flay popped the big question during the holiday season while ice skating at New York City's Rockefeller Plaza, coincidentally where his first marriage to Ponzek was held, and proposed to his third wife with a princess-cut engagement ring. They were engaged for two years before the couple finally tied the knot. Throughout their time together, March appeared on several of Flay's Food Network shows, including eight appearances on Boy Meets Grill with Bobby Flay, Bobby Flay Fit, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Iron Chef America: The Series. 

After five years together, Bobby Flay and Stephanie March were married on February 20, 2005 at St. Peter's Episcopal in New York City by Rev. K Dennis Winslow (via The New York Times). March, an alum of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, kept her own last name throughout the marriage, which lasted ten years before they filed for divorce in 2015.

The couple ended their marriage amid rumors that Flay, who was 50 at the time, was having an affair with his assistant, Elyse Tirrell, who was 28 at the time, and worked at one of Flay's restaurants, Bar Americain, before becoming the famous chef's assistant. In response to the allegations, Flay's representative released a statement saying they would not publicly respond to the alleged affair.

March and Flay had a prenuptial agreement in which Flay had to pay his ex-wife $5,000 a month.

After filing for divorce things turned ugly for Bobby Flay and ex-wife Stephanie March, as personal details about their relationship and marriage began getting leaked to numerous sources. One of the leaks alleged that when March had an emergency appendectomy in November of 2013, Flay did not turn up to be at her side.

According to TMZ, arch had the emergency surgery after her appendix burst, and Flay didn't come to her bedside at the hospital until the day after her surgery. He also reportedly left before she was discharged, saying he had to work and offering to send his assistant to help his wife out as she recovered in the hospital.

That wasn't the only time that Flay wasn't there for March, as they spent their 10th, and ultimately final, anniversary apart, as Flay was attending the Food Network & Cooking Channel South Beach Wine & Food Festival alongside fellow chefs Giada De Laurentiis, Guy Fieri, and Duff Goldman. On February, 21, 2015, the day after the couple's 10-year anniversary, Flay hosted Bobby Flay's Caribbean Heat at the festival.

Following her emergency appendectomy in 2013, then a surgery to help her endometriosis one month later, March went under the knife an additional time the next year to have breast implants.

The surgery, which took place in August 2014, brought March to her knees, which she wrote about in an essay for Refinery 29. In the essay she said that while she has no problems with plastic surgery, the decision to get breast implants ultimately wasn't a good one for her, and she had the surgery done because she felt out of control in her own life.

"I was 39 years old, and my life was disintegrating," March said in the essay. "Couldn't get a job I wanted on camera, couldn't get attention for my production projects, couldn't travel the world far enough or fast enough or immerse myself in philanthropy enough to make it all go away."

She also attributed this feeling to her marriage with Flay falling apart, and having a difficult time coping with that. March said that she changed her body because she could not change anything else in her life, and that Flay was "bewildered" by her decision to have the surgery.

Two months after her breast augmentation, March found out that her right implant was infected. She was on antibiotics for six weeks before having the implant re-implanted, but then suffered another infection in December 2014, when she decided to have her implants removed for good.

While her relationship with Bobby Flay ultimately didn't work out, Stephanie March didn't let that stop her as she continued to search for love. She found it just two years after her divorce when she married tech investor Dan Benton at the home that they share in Katonah, New York, according to a People exclusive article.

March was introduced to the investor a few months after her divorce from Flay, and their first date was at the Orient Express, a bar in New York City's West Village. Benton, who is 15 years March's senior, is the founder of Andor Capital, a hedge fund that shuttered in 2016.

He proposed to the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress while they were vacationing together in Greece. At the wedding, March wore a Dolce & Gabbana dress and borrowed her sister's earrings. Her best friend played the Star Wars theme song on March's grandmother's piano as she walked down the aisle, as both the bride and the groom are big fans of the franchise. The wedding ceremony was followed by an outdoor luncheon at the home.

After Bobby Flay and ex-girlfriend Heléne Yorke split in 2019, the famous chef admitted on his show Beat Bobby Flay that he's "very single," adding that Yorke "kicked him to the curb," when questioned by Fran Drescher, as she made an appearance on the show.

Flay fans were excitedly wondering if he had found a new love interest when he mentioned the name "Christie" in an Instagram video he posted in Dec. 2019, but it turns out the Christie he referred to in the video is most likely his assistant, Christie Bok, who began working for the culinary extraordinaire in 2018. Before that, she had been employed by Mario Batali and had worked in the Delish test kitchen. 

It was a bit difficult to meet new people in 2020, due to social distancing requirements, and Flay has not been linked to anyone new since his breakup with Yorke.