PASSION PROJECTS

WITH NEARLY 450,000 followers on Instagram, culture writer and video creator Kelly Rizzo is a tastemaker when it comes to what people eat and drink, where they might find their next travel adventure, and what music they listen to. Under her brand, EatTravel- Rock, Rizzo also publishes a blog, travel guides, recipes, and other content that aims to tingle the imagination and the tastebuds.

This past year, the 43-year-old Rizzo took on a new, unanticipated role: Processing grief, and helping others with similar experiences to hers process theirs. In January 2022, Rizzo’s husband, the well-known actor and comedian Bob Saget, passed away suddenly while on tour. His death shocked both her and Saget’s legion of fans. She’s spent the past year honoring his memory.

We caught up with Rizzo via Zoom in late January to talk about her growing business but also about her late husband and how he continues to be a presence in her life and work. A Chicago native, Rizzo is familiar with Midwest winters, and looked rather content to be sitting in her sun-drenched home in Los Angeles, where she said the weather had recently taken a turn for the better.

Rizzo’s early years were spent in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. At 12, she moved with her family to Glenview, where she attended Glenbrook South High School. When she was 20, her parents, who own a real estate company, moved to Lake Forest. In all, she spent about 15 years on the North Shore before moving back to Chicago and then to L.A. after she met Saget. Chicago remains home in her heart.

“When I think of home, I consider Chicago my home. When someone asks where I’m from I say, ‘Chicago’,” she says. “That will never, ever change, I don’t care how long I live in L.A. I’m a Chicago girl.”

One of the things Rizzo told Saget when she moved to L.A. is that family and Chicago are extremely important to her, and she couldn’t imagine going months without seeing them. She flies back to Chicago for a week or so every month for work, bouncing between her parent’s house in Lake Forest and her sister’s place in Highland Park.

Like many children of business owners, Rizzo got her professional start working for her family’s real estate company. She obtained her real estate license at the age of 20, going to work with her parents. Although successful, she would learn after seven or eight years that the real estate world wasn’t where she belonged.

“My family’s been in real estate in Chicago for over 40 years, and I became a realtor and broker in Illinois in 1999,” she says. “After the crash in 2008, I burned out. It just was not my thing anymore. At the time it seemed crazy to do anything else because that’s all I’d ever done and all I’d ever known.”

In her gut, Rizzo says, she knew she wanted to follow her passions which, when she thought hard about it, were food, travel, and music. In 2012, she started EatTravelRock and began blogging and making videos that included tips and ideas, including recipes and hotel recommendations.

“I realized that this is really what I love to do. Just to be in this world and talk to chefs and talk to musicians and tell people about the greatest hotels and greatest restaurants and the easiest and best and coolest ways to travel,” Rizzo says. “It kind of just picked up and became an actual full-time career, I left real estate behind. My dad was really sad about that at first, my mom was very encouraging of the new career, and now of course they’re both incredibly encouraging. They both love it.”

People tend to question the judgement, if not the sanity, of those who leave a stable job to pursue a new venture, and Rizzo was no exception. But she ignored the skeptics. Not following her passion was out of the question.

“Part of the message is if it’s something you’re really passionate about and you really believe in yourself and you believe there’s something there, you just keep going for it,” she says. “When you clearly have that drive and determination and passion about it, it’s going to come through, and now it’s nice to see some of the fruits of my labor.”

Along the way—in 2016—Rizzo and Saget met through mutual friends. Love would ensue, which led to a few challenging discussions about geography. Being a Chicago lifer, Rizzo had thought a few times about what it would be like to live in New York or L.A., but there was nothing in her plans to do so. Then Saget came along.

“I met Bob, and he was L.A.-based, and he was so charming that I decided to keep pursuing that and I knew he wasn’t going to move to Chicago,” she says. “He was like, ‘You’re going to need to move to L.A.,” and I said, ‘It’s tempting, the weather is tempting’, so I made the decision. ”Bob always felt a tinge of jealousy with Chicago. He was never jealous of any other people, but he would say he was jealous of Chicago because he thought I liked Chicago more than anybody or anything.”

Jealousy aside, you can hear in Rizzo’s voice that her and Saget’s love affair was the genuine article. It comes out in full in the media interviews she gave on the anniversary of Saget’s death. But he was also an important influence on Rizzo’s business life, giving much needed encouragement based on his more than 40 years in the entertainment business.

“Because he knew show business so well, he would always teach me when I would get discouraged. He would say, ‘Kelly, you’ve been out here a few years, are you serious?’” she says. “He’d say, ‘You just keep going. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t take no for an answer. You have to stay positive.’”

Since Saget’s death, Rizzo has continued to expand EatTravelRock but she says the tone of her content has become more personal knowing that many of her followers have become familiar with her story and have had similar experiences and want to interact. It’s one way to keep her late husband’s legacy alive.

“Bob’s an easy person to talk about and honor and sharing his legacy is the easy part. For what I do forever and ever I’ll always be talking about Bob,” she says. “Bob had so much loss and death and grief in his life, and he always looked at it as an opportunity to not only better himself but to help other people.”

Saget was a “grief expert,” Rizzo says, and he used that experience to help anyone else who was grieving or going through a hard time. She says she’s trying to learn from him.

“I think he was a pro at it. He always knew what to say and I’m still not great at it but I’m getting better,” she says. “All of the lessons he taught me from his lifetime of experience, of really going through it on the career side and on the life side, that’s stuff that I will take with me forever.”

As for her future plans, Rizzo says a show is always the ultimate goal and something she’s been working on for a long time. In the near future, she has a podcast in the works that she’s very excited about that focuses on inspiration and grief, with a bit of a food tie in.

“Something that actually really helps people, not that recipes and travel tips don’t help people, but helps people in a deeper way,” she says. “There’s also hopefully a cookbook plus some other interesting things related to the book that I can’t give away just yet, but a lot of endeavors coming down the line that I’m really excited about.”

She also wants to inspire younger women and girls not to doubt their own dreams and to follow their passions, even if it means ignoring their naysayers. When you’re young, it’s easy to feel the tug of doing what others want you to do instead of following your own path.

“Maybe your family has a business like mine did and people really want you to get involved with the family business because it’s what you do. If that’s not what your heart is telling you to do, that’s okay,” says Rizzo. “Some people might not understand that in the beginning but if it makes sense to you and it’s what you truly want to do in your heart, if you lead with conviction and purpose and passion, then all the people who might be a little doubtful in the beginning will come around.”

On the wall in Rizzo’s home is a reminder for her when making the tough or even everyday choices that can alter our lives—and the lives of others—for the better. It’s a familiar face.

“I have a needlepoint that somebody did for me. It’s a picture of Bob and at the bottom it says WWBD, What would Bob do?” she says. “That’s what I think about all the time. What would he do? If he went through this, how would he use it to help people?”

Follow Kelly Rizzo on Instagram at @EatTravelRock.