Sandra Lee Talks Andrew Cuomo’s ‘Heartbreaking’ Split and Cancer Battle

Ten years ago, Sandra Lee she had it all: a woman raised in poverty who became a very successful businesswoman, starring in her own Emmy-winning TV show, Semi-Homemade Cooking. The happy queen of pantry hacks, 58, was also a long-time partner of the handsome and powerful politician. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York. And then his life – a seemingly perfect combination of beauty and the sense of the city that resembles his tableau – quickly fell apart.

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015, which led to a double mastectomy and a full hysterectomy. Lee’s cancer treatment left him unable to continue his TV series, and it ended later that year after 15 seasons. However, the worst was yet to come. In 2019, her relationship with Cuomo, 66, imploded, putting the independent Lee at the center of a long and public scandal. As photographers documented every step of the end of that relationship, Lee fled New York to LA and withdrew from public life.

“When I was sick, I was so stressed and depressed that when the Food Network canceled me, I didn’t have the strength to fight them,” Lee said. Us Weekly with the conclusion of Semi-Homemade.

The woman sitting on the floor with him Us in the living room of her Malibu home away from Sandra Lee’s past. No more perky 50s throwback kitsch defined Semi-Homemade. In its place is someone who went through hell and came out happy, determined and true. Now he is finally strong enough to talk about what happened. “I have agreed that I will never face the pain of bereavement in the last 10 years,” he said angrily. “The grief was endless but I will use it to fuel and feed me and make me wiser and stronger.”

Lee stops to drink her (made from scratch!) iced tea, her makeup-free face glowing in the natural light. He stares out his window, tears welling in his eyes, as he watches: The Pacific Ocean glistens calmly as a pod of dolphins come up from the shore. “I can say,” he continued, finally, “that I had the most challenging ten years of my life.”

The Dark Ages

To call his test meaningless is an understatement. But today’s Sandra Lee is ready to get back to the business of living. You have a new TV series, Dinner Budget Showdown on Roku and Blue Ribbon Baking Championship premieres August 9 on Netflix. He also celebrated his three years with her Ben Youcefthe handsome young man who swept up and taught Lee to love – and trust – over and over again.

It wasn’t easy. Cuomo, who appeared as a devoted and supportive partner in Lee’s documentary about his cancer treatment, could apparently be a different person behind the scenes. Growing up far away, he spent a lot of time without Lee. Cuomo’s spokesman says Us: “Governor Cuomo has been completely supportive of Sandra through good times and bad. He joined him, spent time with him [his] girls, and handled the duties as the first lady very well. Sandra and the Governor had separate and busy lives and eventually parted ways. Breakups are always difficult and there are always two sides to a story, but the Governor chooses to focus on the positive and wishes her nothing but success and happiness in the years to come. “

The lowest point Lee described came on her birthday in 2015 following her double pregnancy.

“Cancer is aggressive and insidious, and it hides and waits,” Lee said of her battle with the disease, which she was diagnosed with the same year. “I had to spend a year dealing with that, as violently as possible.”

In cancer treatment, any birthday is important, a marker of personal success against the disease. “I spent the day alone. I was sitting on my lawn by myself,” said Lee. (Cuomo denies this and says he changed his schedule to be there.) “My birthday was a precious day for me, especially that one. I’m not one to feel sorry for myself, but that day was big for me.” Lee added that he finally got home and they went out for dinner, but the damage was already done.

Their relationship continued to deteriorate. In the spring of 2019, Cuomo commented, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I was in my kitchen,” he recalls, “and he said something, and the minute he said it I knew what he had just said. And all the windows and doors were closed. And so it was.” Lee’s dedication to honesty kept him from revealing what was really said. “You know what it is; I know what it is,” he said Us, declined to elaborate. Cuomo says he did not see Lee at this time.

Breaking Point

After enduring media coverage of the breakup — a humiliating moment Lee would only describe as “s-tty” — another tragedy rocked her world. A beloved West Coast uncle became terminally ill, and Lee immediately devoted himself to his care. He says: “My job was to buy him time.” “And I did.” Lee made sure to achieve more of his uncle’s bucket list before he succumbed to his illness, and his death in December 2023, while a huge blow to him, proved to be a painful one as well.

“I went into the bathroom and I just started vomiting,” he said quietly. “I think that was my five-year-old body.” Lee is silent. “Honestly, that had to be the lowest point in my life, leaning over the toilet, purging from sadness and grief.”

During this time, after growing boldly during the pandemic, the life and career of his former Cuomo collapsed amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior with female employees. (Cuomo denied the allegations and said any suggestion that he was disloyal to Lee was false.) The controversy became a media snowball as allegations piled up, eventually ending his term as governor. The scandal brought Cuomo’s rift with Lee back into the spotlight, and the new attention threatened to overwhelm him. When asked about the allegations, Lee takes the high road, refusing to speculate about what happened.

Lee refuses to go into detail about her bitter split with Cuomo, saying only, “When you’re living separate lives, you’re not creating a life together.”

Dream Man

For Lee, there was a light at the end of the tunnel: In the midst of the turmoil, he found love. “Meeting Ben was amazing,” Lee enthused. “It was the right intersection of time and chemistry.” However, he was “afraid” to start anything and it took months before anything happened with Youcef. “I haven’t been in love for years and years. I literally felt innocent when I was 55 years old,” Lee said, “and I didn’t want to get involved again.”

Youcef, 46, was gentle and persistent, not even trying to kiss Lee until they had been dating for two months. “Finally he kissed me and I stopped where I was,” Lee recalled. “He kept his lips on mine, my mind just disappeared. I still didn’t kiss him.”

When Lee called him the next day to apologize for his strange behavior, Youcef brushed it off. “He waited and insisted, here we are,” he said with a laugh, adding that he no longer has problems when it comes to intimacy. “My chemistry with Ben is something I’ve never had before,” he says. “It’s mental, it’s emotional, and it’s a connection that I can’t even describe.”

The connection is indicated by the engagement rings worn by the couple. When asked to compare Youcef to Cuomo, he thinks for a minute before answering. In the end he says: “Ben is patient and he doesn’t hide anything. “He looks at me all the time, and he tells me everything. He likes to help people without any agenda or motive. He really tries to be a better person every day.”

Sweet Spot

With that side of his life under control, Lee turned his attention back to TV. His latest project, Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, a cooking competition set in the cutthroat world of country fair baking competitions. The idea first came to Lee 12 years ago, inspired by his experience as a blue ribbon winning baker at the 1992 Los Angeles County Fair. “These people are the most competitive in the nation,” he said. “We asked the nation to find the best bakers in the United States. One woman, Eileen, has 700 ribbons!”

On top of Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, Lee is back in full swing, appropriately enough, with “a dozen” other projects in various stages of development. And at the end of the day, miraculously he can look back on the last 10 years with confidence and hope. He says: “We all experience pain and suffering. “You are either at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of pain and suffering. It’s life. It’s a cycle. And then you get these amazing rushes of joy that make it worth it,” he pauses, searching for the right words. “My life was a nightmare that slowly turned into a dream.”

As Lee returns to the public eye, he has a new mantra from an unlikely source. “I learned ways to manage life Taylor Swift,” he said with a laugh. “I visit myself often, I talk to myself. ‘Is that all right with you, Sandy? Does this work for you? Have you made this mistake before?’”

As the interview ends, Lee is relaxed and at peace. When asked if there is anything he would like to leave students with, his answer is quick. “Love,” he said with a big smile, “makes life happy.”

To find out more about Sandra Lee, watch the exclusive video above and download the latest issue of Us Weekly – in the news markets now.

With reporting by Amanda Williams