Who is Anthony Bourdain? The Wife, Net Worth, Girlfriend, Daughter, Death

Quick Facts

One amazing thing about Anthony Bourdain is the fact that he not just an ordinary chef, but a celebrity one. Apart from the other endeavors he engages in, his cooking skills have been considered one of the best in the world. Besides all of his amazing talents, he also has a distinctly distinguishing feature which is his height. He is 6 feet 4 inches tall.

Who is Anthony Bourdain?

Anthony Michael Bourdain is an American whose skills are pretty incredible in the kitchen as a chef. He is also an author, a travel documentarian and a television personality. However, he practices his kitchen potentials more often than his other professions. He was popularly referred to as ‘Tony’, an acronym coined from his name ‘Anthony’ which he got used to while growing.

He was born on June 25, 1956, in New York City, but grew up in Leonia, New Jersey. His father, Piere Bourdin, was a classical music industry executive for Columbia Records who died in 1987, and Gladys Sacksman, his mother, is a staff editor for the New York Times. He has a younger brother named Christopher who is a currency analyst and hosts Tv shows.

Anthony Bourdain was raised in a home where no one was forced to follow a particular religion. Even though his mom was a Jew and his father a Catholic, he never accepted nor identified with any religion. As a member of the Boys Scout, while growing up, he attended Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey in 1973, and later on attended Vassar College but didn’t finish. He dropped out because while in school, he had been working in seafood restaurants which nurtured his already budding love for food and inspired him to go into cooking and making delicacies full time.

Having dropped out from Vassar, he enrolled in The Culinary Institute of America and graduated in 1978. Following his graduation, he gained a lot of knowledge on culinary duties learning both theoretically and practically from different kitchens in NYC. He has bragged about his cooking skills saying that his cravings for food and making them started when he was much younger going on a vacation with his family and having to try out different delicacies.

Career

In 1998, after he has garnered a wealth of knowledge from all the kitchens he has been with, Anthony Bourdain was employed as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan where he worked for many years and won the hearts of the workers there who even nicknamed him ‘Chef at large’.

Before his fame spread like wildfire, Bourdain first became famous when he published his first book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. The success of the book made him famous and he sold more than 2000 copies worldwide. When it became evident that Anthony Bourdain needed more than just kitchen duties to keep him on his toes, he began his first food and world travel television show in 2002, which had 35 episodes on Food Network and ended in 2003.

He took the TV appearance a step further and started the Travel Channel’s culinary and cultural adventure programs named Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations which aired from 2005 to 2012. He started The Layover in 2011 and it stopped in 2013 same year he took to hosting The Taste. He later went on a journey when he started a travelogue programming to CNN entitled Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

Anthony Bourdain has not only achieved plenty with his cooking skills, he has written other books – both fiction and historical fiction – some of which are A Cook’s Tour (2001) and The Nasty Bits (2006). The former was written in respect to his first television series and the latter was written with the collection of his food.

Most of Tony’s books were basically on food because like his passion depicts, he is all about food. So many looked up to Tony and his publications, articles and essays were widely read and his shows widely viewed too. His blog for the third season of Top Chef was nominated for the Webby Award in 2008 but did not quite make it past the finish line.

His television series include A Cook’s Tour which ran from 2002 to 2003, No Reservations (2005-2012), The Layover (2011-2013), Parts Unknown (2011-2013). Adding prestige to his shows, it is on record that he once featured a  former president of the United States of America, in his show, Parts Unknown.

Tony practiced the martial arts, Brazillian jiu-jitsu, and he earned a blue belt in August 2015 and also won a gold belt in 2016. He was addicted to smoking and drinking, cocaine, heroin, and LSD. He broke the record for having coffee and cigarette as a course meal which was served to him by his fellow chef Thomas Keller while giving him a 20-course meal. Fortunately, his love for his daughter made him quit smoking in 2007.

Net Worth

For his many years in the field cooking food, serving up delicacies, breaking records, winning awards, and entertaining as well as educating his fans, Anthony Bourdain amassed a small fortune for himself. His career as a chef was highly successful and his net worth is estimated to be at $16 million.

Wife, Girlfriend & Daughter

Anthony Bourdain went to the altar in matrimony twice during his lifetime. First, he tied the knot with his high school sweetheart, Nancy Putkoski in a love affair that lasted for twenty years from 1985 to 2005 before they got divorced. Barely two years later, he chose to give marriage a second trial when he tied the nuptial knot a second time with Ottavia Busia who was a mixed martial artist at the time. The marriage took place on 20th April 2007, after dating for a few weeks. Busia bore him a daughter that same year and they named her Ariane. Ottavia was introduced to Tony by his good friend Eric Ripert.

The second trial did not last either as Tony and Ottavia’s marriage failed in 2016. He started an affair with Italian actress, Asian Argento in 2017 after they at one of their shoots on Parts Unknown in Rome. Argento is a director, a singer, and writer who once accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her. When Tony died, she wept till her eyes went sour, she described him as her protector and inspiration.

Anthony Bourdain’s Death

Anthony Bourdain’s death was yet another painful one. The world lost one of its greatest kitchen assets when Anthony Bourdain took his own life in a suicide and was found lifeless in his hotel room at Le Chambard hotel in Kaysersberg, France on June 8, 2018. He committed suicide by hanging himself and was discovered by his friend, Eric Ripert. Apparently, no one has discovered why Tony would take his own life. He died at the age of 61.

Anthony’s days may have been cut short, but the impact he made, the souls he inspired and the records he broke still blaze the trail and keep him relevant in the hearts of fans and family alike.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.