Gabriele Corcos

Gabriele Corcos (born October 7, 1972) is an Italian celebrity cook, entrepreneur, and television personality. He is the creator, host, and producer of Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel. He is also the author of a New York Times best-selling cookbook, Extra Virgin. Corcos owns The Tuscan Gun Officine Alimentari in Brooklyn, New York. He will be starring with his wife, Debi Mazar, in the new television show, Extra Virgin Americana, which is slated to premiere February 2016 on The Cooking Channel. Corcos has involved himself with several anti-hunger charities.

Born into a family of mostly Sephardic Jewish descent in Fiesole, Italy, Corcos was raised in Tuscany. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Italian Army where he studied medicine at the military academy for several years. However, his true passion was in music and he decided to pursue his musical studies rather than complete his medical degree and be deployed in a war zone. Corcos traveled to Brazil, Cuba, and Morocco to study drums and to perform along with musicians from those countries.

In 2001 Corcos met his wife, Debi Mazar. He left his family in Fiesole to move to Los Angeles, CA. The two married on March 16, 2002. While his wife was filming during the day, Corcos would write on his computer about the impression American food had made on him.

One day the couple filmed themselves in the kitchen making a simple red sauce for spaghetti. They posted it on the newly launched website, YouTube. In 2006, the "Under the Tuscan Gun" blog and web series was born, after the two received countless emails from people who loved the project. The couple raised a large community of devoted fans over the five-year course of the web series, with no intention of going to TV. However, with the creation the Cooking Channel in May 2010 by Scripps Networks Interactive, the couple was asked to be the hosts of the channel's very first original cooking show. The Boston Globe thus dubbed them Cooking Channel's "first family". From the time of the web series, the interaction between Corcos and Mazar has been compared to that of Ricky and Lucy Ricardo on I Love Lucy.

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