Hey, it's Graham. Our past in depth guests have
shared so many inspirational stories about overcoming
adversity and tackling the darkest and most challenging
times in their lives. We're sharing one of those
moments in today's Thursday podcast in the hope that it
provides A blueprint for any difficulties you might be facing
this week. Guy Fieri.
I want to ask you about your sister Morgan.
You have said you credit a lot of your success to the education
that she gave you. How so?
My sister had a different you know, when you battle cancer at
four years old, she had cancer at 4, survived it.
You guys spend time living at the Ronald McDonald, yes?
So in the great thing was is that was in Ronald McDonald
House was first starting in San Francisco.
My parents went down a lot of times, brought a lot of
furniture down, did a lot of things to help, but we lived in
our car a lot. My sister got cancer again when
she was 38. Vegan, vegetarian, massage
therapist, single mom, couldn't live a healthier life.
African dance, gorgeous gets Melanoma, a derivative of what's
called Wilms tumor, this tumor that she had as a child.
And here we go on this battle. Oh my God, That was the worst
thing to ever be around. And to think of her, you know,
leaving Jules, my nephew, it's just, it was horrific.
But my sister would say I'm coming over for dinner.
She wasn't a bossy redhead. She wasn't mean, but she just
had her thing like I'm, you know, coming over for dinner.
Could we just have something other than grilled vegetables
with the salmat glaze and basmati rice?
Because that's what I'd make her every time.
You know, I'm making everything else for everybody else.
And then she's like, I just don't want that because it's
what you make every time. Wow.
So I had to like, OK, well, I guess the cauliflower steak
would make it like piccata. OK.
So that really just taught me a lot.
And then she had to work within a real serious pH diet because
of the cancer and no sugar cause cancer, love sugar and all these
different things. And so I just really spent a lot
of time trying to cook the right way for her, but her strength,
knowing that she was dying and knowing that she was leaving her
kid and knowing that it was happening.
I just watched. I mean, I don't know what you
look like when you're a general in the face of battle and
you're, you know, they're attacking and there's no, you
know, positive. I mean, this woman was just
steadfast, stuck to it and held on.
And it was just, it was pretty amazing.
And, and the thing was, is it taught me a lot about I never, I
thought you died creepy. You know, I don't know.
She was, she laid in mourning. We laid in mourning for two
days, shrouded in flowers in the living room.
We had a luncheon. Kids played, people took
pictures with her. That was the oddest, creepiest
thing in the world I thought would ever happen.
It was the most beautiful, amazing, most dignified thing I
could ever imagine happening to somebody.
It's it changed my whole way of looking at death.
How so it? Wasn't, I don't know, I just
thought the body, I don't know, I don't know what happened.
Maybe it's because of movies or something.
You just thought it was not a beautiful thing.
And it wasn't like I wasn't letting her go.
I know that her energy had like her soul had like, you know, the
the spirit had left. But it was this thing of
celebrating. It was like total respect of the
person. How did your parents get through
that? Oh Jesus.
I don't think they ever got through it.
I don't, I don't, I don't know, I don't think of anything that
there is worse to do to somebody than for them to survive their
child passing. I mean, I just, I, I can't
fathom it. I just, I'd completely, I'd
completely lose my they, we spent a lot of time talking
about her, a lot of time honoring her.
That was one of the things I tried to do the most is make
sure that I kept her top of mind always, you know, like always.
And that's the reason I went and got the tattoo of her.
And why that tattoo? So we love Mexico.
We have a great house down in Mexico that we built, and that's
one of the reasons we built it is because we spent a lot of
time as a family down there. So it's a candle that reminds me
of Mexico. OK, so my sister's a redhead.
The shroud around her is dragonflies, something we always
associated my sister with. And behind her are all the
chakras. So all the chakras are lined up
behind her. So my sister was very spiritual,
very grounded, and these were just all things and Namaste,
which is one of my favorite words now.
And if you celebrate the word and understand it, but it's the
power in me celebrates the power.
And you're the God in me sees the God in you and.
That was her word. It was her word.
End of every end of every message, voicemail, letter.
It was Namaste. Well, I didn't know what it
meant. Namaste.
Hey, hey, you know, I'd always have something to say about it.
And when she was passing that like that last week, when she
was, you know, and all her friends were coming over,
African dance friends were there in Fairfax.
We're just sitting there talking about stuff.
And, you know, you're so vulnerable, happily vulnerable.
You know, you're willing to listen and learn and get.
I'm trying to get in touch with like, what am I getting ready to
experience? And all these amazing women and
friends of hers were so in touch.
You know, it's like I was coming from a different perspective in
life. You know, I hadn't been, as, you
know, just you have different awareness.
Like I could sit there and tell them a million things about
other aspects of life and business, but they were really
into their spirituality. And so they were telling me
about Namaste. And I'm like, of course.
So I went to my tattoo artist, the guy who's done all these
tattoos and a great friend of mine, guy named Joe Leonard.
And I said, this is what I want to achieve.
And so he drew it up. And so my mom has never been a
fan of my tattoos, not negative, not like, oh, you did that to
your body, just like, you know why?
And every tattoo has. So this was the day the the was
Diaz de Morte that after she died, that that day I went and
had this done in honor of her to recognize her, you know, to
celebrate my sister. So yes, I came to my sister's
burial and we did a green burial, which was amazing.
Another epiphany. Unique situation because
shrouded in cloth and buried in the ground, no casket, no
cremation, none of that stuff. And consistent with what she
would have. Wanted well, and the crazy thing
was nobody had asked her. Well, she was in that point
wasn't communicating. And I said we're going to
cremate her and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa. There's no cremating.
Aren't she fossil to burn up fuel?
You know, she wasn't that kind of like she wasn't marching and
throwing paint on stuff. You know, she wasn't flipping
out about it, but she was really.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, we got to do green barrel like
where are we going to do it? Like well, Novato and I'm like,
no, because I want to be able to go visit her.
I don't drive Novato. So we found out Sebastopol has
one beautiful cemetery, really old cemetery in in Sebastopol.
And as I said, my dad's there now and we had the most
incredible ceremony. I mean, just in that these two
Hawks came and it was just it was just the greatest, greatest
time that the greatest emotional family, the whole thing.
But I showed up with this tattoo and my mom says I said it was
what is that? And I said, and best tattoo you
ever got, you know, she loses her mind.
Yeah, sure enough, I have to drag her.
My aunt and a couple of my cousins, they want tattoos.
So they go down to Joe Leonard and they get butterflies right
here. Namaste.
So there's my mom at 65 getting namaste butterfly on her wrist.
And I said you're so gangster. How did you go about figuring
out the process for how to parent Jules?
Well, that was a tough one. That was a tough one.
Jules and I weren't as close. I mean, Jules now, in my
opinion, is my son. I mean, that's as close as I can
say it. He.
What about that touches you? Well, so his dad really wasn't
in his life or was not in his life.
And my sister and I, we got a dollar from this guy and he just
was really absentee. And I can't ever see negative
things about because Jules is dad.
So in some little small way, I got to be OK with the guy
because we wouldn't have Jules, but Jules would come to our
house, we'd watch him for the weekend and Jules would eat
every bit of junk food or candy or whatever he could get in his
face because there was none of that at his house.
Jules is incredibly intelligent, smarter than his own good,
especially when he was a little kid because he was conniving.
I always had to watch Jules with, you know, the side of my
eye what was going on. So when my sister dies, my
parents, we all decide it's best.
He lives over my parents house, my parent.
We live right next door to each other.
So it's like he lives with us, but he lives there and there.
He's under more of their control, their direction than
they as mine because he's coming out of Montessori, running
around the streets of Fairfax, coming to a little bit more of a
regimented environment with with us.
And we go through some tough times in high school because
he's just smart enough to pull the shit over my parents.
He's smart enough to, you know, talk them in circles.
And I'm catching this stuff and I have to deal with it.
When problems happen. Now I'm involved, so we go
through a few of those. We're going to butt some heads
and which way are we going to go?
And eventually it smooths itself out and off he goes to college.
When he is, he is so intelligent and so hard working.
He is working as a full time agent in EDM and travelling and
doing that. And he goes to school, he goes
to law school four nights a week, 4 hours a night.
And he's been doing that for the last two years.
And he's a four point O student. And he's not going to be an
attorney. He's going to practice business
law or entertainment law so he can be the best of the best in
his industry. And that's one of my, that was
only one of my that was a little bit of my mandate.
You guys all want to be in the will.
You all want to get what we built.
You're all going to have 2°. Like check.
He I think he didn't mean it exactly in the way I meant it,
but that's fine. I actually did.
He he was one of my inspirations.
I thought, wow, that's a really great way to look at it and not
but all the kids want to do it, But the reality of it is
Hunter's doing it now. Hunter, I think Jules starting
it off. Hunter's in at Miami in
business. Poor Rider looked at me and
said, I don't really know about this.
You know, like they're, they're, I'm not even in high school.
So on the money front, because you know, we've been fortunate
to profile a lot of folks through the show and there's
always seems to be the struggle with somebody who's super
successful of what you passed down, how you allow your success
to create opportunities, but what the balance is between that
and dampening motivation. You've said before you're going
to die broke. Give a little context to like
what the reality of that. Means no.
My dad's the one that said he would die broke and told me he
would leave me nothing, which was awesome because he really
did. I mean, they left me nothing.
I don't need anything. I mean, I need I everything I
needed, I got from him. So my thing is philanthropies,
super key to my life. Boys are of course super key.
I want them to all find their goals of what they want to be.
Hunter works for Knuckle Sandwich and he does a fantastic
job. He's on the road a lot selling
the wine. We have a little wine company
called Hunt Ride, Hunter and Rider.
Jules wants to eventually have his own agency and represent
artists, which I told him he has to give 10 years of doing it for
somebody else. But he has to diversify.
He can't do it for the same company has 7th degree.
So we're setting up like same hurdles, same benchmarks, same
achievement strategy that my dad set up for me when I was a kid.
So I went and did the corporate world for a long time.
He said you have to do it. You have to understand P and LS.
You have to understand, you know, how the corporate world,
how to do the structure, how to keep from getting sued, how to
do all the stuff. You go do it for somebody else.
You learn on their dime. Then when you got it, I'll help
you and they mortgage their house.
I needed $50,000. And they were close to
retirement. They were retiring.
Yeah. And they mortgaged their house
so I could do it. I paid him back in six months.
I paid him back to 50 grand in six months.
But so, no, The thing is, I want the kids to have, you know, we
have the big ranch. We have the small ranch.
We have the Florida house. We have the, we have the Mexico.
We've got a lot of stuff. You know what my dad said to me
when he's like the last week he was alive, I said, Dad, I just
want you to know I got taken care of.
I got everything handled at the house that my childhood home.
How that's being handled. They owned a small restaurant.
How that's being handled, mom taking over all the bills and
paying all the bills got all that handled, got all your
handled. And he looks at me and he goes,
I don't worry about my you're the one with a ton of who's
going to handle your shit when you die.
Don't leave those kids with a bunch of headaches.
I'm like, really that's and it was very godfather.
You know, he's laying in the hospital, but he died at home,
but he's laying in one in this hospital and he's like, here's
you got more money. It's pretty funny.
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