Comfort Food with Kelly Rizzo

Cheryl Burke spent 26 seasons and 17 years as one of the most iconic pros on Dancing with the Stars. Then in one year, she walked away from the show, went through a divorce, and moved to a city where she didn't know a soul. Starting over at 38 with no idea what her favorite color even was. Kelly and Cheryl connected through mutual friends and bonded over tough times, and this conversation goes...

This episode was recorded in early 2024, and it means even more now knowing everything Dave has been through since. He was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, beat it, and then just seven months later was diagnosed with a second cancer. He has since been declared cancer free, and everything he says in this conversation about finding joy, honoring the people you've lost, and getting throug...

 Kelly sits down with Courtney LaCorte, aka Cheese Gal, the Nashville-based content creator who accidentally built a brand around beautiful, approachable hosting and never looked back. They make the Bob Martini together (Stoli Elite, no vermouth, stupid cold, dead penguins floating), talk about the reality behind the perfectly curated feed, and get into what it actually takes to build a commu...

Kelly sits down with comedian Kelsey Cook, whose brand new Netflix special Happy Hour is out right now and it is absolutely spectacular. Kelsey grew up in the most wonderfully bizarre household: her parents met at a professional foosball tournament, her mom is literally in the Foosball Hall of Fame, and her dad toured Europe and Hawaii as an International Yo-Yo Man. But underneath all that quirk w...

This week Kelly is getting really personal about one of the most common fears in the grief and dating world: what does it actually look like when your new person truly honors your late spouse? Kelly opens up about all the specific, beautiful ways her boyfriend Breckin shows up for both her and Bob's memory. From always asking about Bob in everyday conversation and never making it weird when Kelly...

Nina Parker is one of those people who walks into a room and owns it. She's hosted TMZ Live, co-hosted E! News, and is now co-hosting Keep It on Crooked Media. But what you really need to know is that she is one of the most honest, grounded, and genuinely funny women I have met in a long time. We started talking about grief, because that's just what happens when two women who have been through rea...

Kelly sits down with Joey Zauzig, aka the internet's best friend, and this might genuinely be the most fun episode of Comfort Food ever. Joey is the wildly popular content creator and Instagram personality known for his direct, no-BS take on dating, relationships, and real life, and the energy between these two is absolutely unmatched from the first second. They get into everything: how Joey went...

What would you do if a DNA test revealed you were the granddaughter of the man behind some of the most infamous murders in American history? That is exactly what happened to Sophia Maddox. At just 22 years old, she learned that her grandfather was Charles Manson. Her father never knew who his dad was, spent years searching through ancestry databases, and then one day a half-brother called with new...

This week Kelly is going solo, and she is getting real about the relationship rules she wishes someone had handed her back in her 20s and 30s. The kind of wisdom you can only earn the hard way, through mistakes, growth, and a whole lot of lived experience. Kelly covers the big ones: why cheating isn't just wrong but genuinely not worth the anxiety and guilt it costs you, the trap of getting too dr...

Some conversations you plan for a long time because you know they're going to matter. This is one of them. Kelly sits down with one of her closest and dearest friends, Melissa Mickelson, for a raw, honest, and deeply moving conversation about widowhood. Kelly lost her husband Bob four and a half years ago. Melissa lost her husband Dean nine months ago. And as Melissa puts it, she watched Kelly go...

Kelly has been wanting to have this conversation for a long time, and she's so glad she finally did. Her guest is Lindzi Scharf, a writer, entrepreneur, and mother who lost her daughter Evan at just three and a half years old to an incredibly rare mitochondrial disease. Evan was only the 27th child in the world known to have her specific condition. What makes this conversation so special is the wa...

Kelly is going there. She has hinted at this story before, but this is the first time she has ever shared the full, unfiltered details of her worst breakup ever. And yes, it is as shocking as it sounds. It was 2015. Kelly was 36, living with her boyfriend, had just bought a house with him, and was basically planning a future together. Then the day before the movers arrived, he sat her down and end...

Content warning: This episode contains a candid discussion of suicidal thoughts. Please listen with care. Kelly and Alison Victoria have been friends for years, both Chicago girls with more in common than they ever got to explore until now. This is the conversation they've been wanting to have, and Alison chose Comfort Food as the only place she'd tell this story for the first time. For the first...

This one is so special, and Kelly is so glad to be bringing it back. When Kelly first dreamed up this show, John Stamos was one of the very first people she thought of. He's a beloved actor, musician, and New York Times bestselling author of "If You Would Have Told Me." But more than any of that, he is one of her dearest friends and one of the greatest sources of comfort she's had since losing Bob...

Egg freezing has become almost a cultural mandate for women in their 30s. And if you haven't done it, people want to know why. Today I'm talking about why I chose not to, and what that decision taught me about knowing yourself, trusting your gut, and pushing back on the idea that there's one right answer for every woman. This isn't an anti-egg-freezing episode. It's an honest look at the pressure...

Okay, this one is a little different from our usual Comfort Food conversations, and honestly? I'm so glad we went there. My guest is the gorgeous and refreshingly honest Catt Sadler, and we get into two topics that I think so many of you are going to relate to. First: plastic surgery. Catt was truly one of the first women in the public eye to openly document her facelift (plus neck lift and upper...

This week I'm over in Europe, so I'm taking a little time off from recording. But I could never leave you with nothing, so I'm bringing back the episode that means the most to me, and that also happens to be the biggest "audience favorite" episode from Comfort Food Season 1: my conversation with John Mayer. John and I went through an incredibly difficult time together in the wake of losing my husb...

Do you believe in signs from loved ones who've passed? Kelly never really did. It felt a little woo woo, not really her thing. But after losing Bob, she had a few experiences she genuinely cannot explain, and she's sharing all of them in this episode. Three stories. The doves that appeared over Bob's funeral with no explanation (Lori Loughlin was there and assumed they were hired), the wooden figu...

What actually keeps a long distance friendship alive for over two decades? Kelly is joined by her absolute ride-or-die, her best friend Aggie, who flew in from Chicago for this one, and they are getting into all of it. These two met in the early 2000s on the Chicago club scene and have now survived a coast-to-coast move, heartbreaks, a loss, cancer scares, and somewhere along the way, a whole lot...

Four years ago, on the night Bob passed away, two women Kelly barely knew showed up at her front door and said, "Where's the kitchen?" They spent the rest of the night doing Kelly's dishes, taking out the trash, and passing out waters to everyone in her house. Kelly has been telling that story ever since, and today she finally gets to tell it WITH them. Elisha Krauss and Heather Cooney join Kelly...

This one is really special. And really personal. Kelly recently found a grief journal tucked in her nightstand that she wrote in less than a month after losing Bob. The problem? She had completely forgotten she'd written in it. She opened it expecting blank pages... and found something that stopped her in her tracks. In this episode, Kelly reads from that journal for the first time in over four an...

Bestselling author Gabrielle Stone joins Kelly for one of the most kindred-spirit conversations Comfort Food has had yet. Gabrielle wrote the cult-favorite memoir Eat Pray FML, its sequel The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl, and her newest release with husband Tay, Finding You Through Finding Me. Her CliffsNotes story: married almost two years, blindsided by her husband's six-month affai...

Julie Smolyansky, CEO of LifeWay Foods — the largest kefir brand in the country — has one of the most extraordinary stories you'll ever hear. Born in Soviet Ukraine, her family defected behind the Iron Curtain when she was just one year old, arriving in America with $116 and no English. Her mother went on to open Chicago's first Slavic deli — and even brought the very first cases of Nutella to the...

This episode is about the kind of pain no one talks about enough. Lala Kent opens up about hitting rock bottom, navigating public heartbreak, a horrific breakup, child custody, and the kind of emotional spiral that can make you feel like you’re not going to make it out. We talk about what it’s like when your life blows up publicly… and how you find your way back when everything feels lost. We get...

The night before my husband Bob passed away, I was lying in bed watching Sex and the City (...And Just Like That) Specifically… the episode where Mr. Big dies. I remember feeling completely gutted watching Carrie lose her husband so suddenly. I was thinking, that would be the worst thing imaginable. Trying to put myself in her shoes… trying to understand that kind of loss. And then, just hours lat...