Rachael Ray Says She Gets in 'Huge Screaming Matches All the Time' with Her Husband: 'That's Healthy'

When it comes to relationships, Rachael Ray doesn’t believe in avoiding conflict.

On the first episode of her new podcast, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Ray, 56, opened up about how she and her longtime husband, John Cusimano, resolve arguments.

“It’s very hard, especially for hot-tempered or creative or vociferous loud people to be able to just calm it down,” she told her first guest, Jenny Mollen. “John and I don’t calm it down ever. We have huge screaming matches all the time, but I think that’s healthy. I really do. And I don’t trust people that are too quiet." 

“Too quiet freaks me out," Ray continued. "I prefer that you tell me what you think when you think it and let’s just get it all out there.”

Mollen, who’s been married to actor Jason Biggs for 16 years, then asked Ray who is usually the first to apologize.

“I don’t know that we ever apologize to each other,” Ray replied. “Eventually I pat him on his ass or he kisses me on the head, and that’s just sort of it. That’s the apology. It’s just sort of understood. ‘I still like your ass.’ ‘I still like your head.’ It’s kind of in that zone.”

Ray and Cusimano, a musician and lawyer, tied the knot in 2005. On I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the celebrity cook also recalled their first impressions of each other.

“When we met, he had no idea what I did, and I thought he was gay,” she said. “He told me what he had made for dinner the night before, and it was so impressive, and he told me he was a lawyer. There’s no way a straight guy knows what tilapia is, or he was trying to spice it up with some homemade tomatillo salsa and he made maque choux spilling out of an avocado on the side.”

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Ray even had a friend in mind she planned to set up with Cusimano.

“I said, ‘He’s a great guy’ and I started to describe him, and he said ‘I’m not gay,’” she said. “And I’m like ‘Check, please!’”

In 2022, Ray told PEOPLE that she and her husband “balance each other” and “always have.”

"We have volatile personalities but we're both very practical. too," she said. "That's the lawyer side of him and the domestic side of me. We're like, 'These are the things that must be accomplished today. And we will get to this only by doing what work is necessary.'"