Jan D’Atri and Mom, Livia, Living
the Sweet Life - By Jimmy Magahern
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It’s the hottest day of the year, so far — 107 degrees, even as the late afternoon sun begins its merciful descent — and Jan D’Atri along with her mother, Livia, are taking a break at a Paradise Valley coffee shop to plan the week ahead.
As on any given week, the veteran Valley TV and radio personality has a full plate. Monday through Friday, there’s her lifestyle show on KPNX-TV 12, Arizona Midday, followed by her afternoon cooking show on Fox News Radio KFYI 550, “In the Kitchen With Jan D’Atri.” In addition, D’Atri writes a weekly column for the Arizona Republic and a monthly column for Lovin’ Life After 50 and the largest family of free distribution publications in Arizona, The Times Publications.
“Momma” Livia D’Atri is a frequent guest — and always steals the show, Jan says — on her daughter’s TV and radio programs. And this Friday, the inseparable mother-daughter team will host a book signing for their cookbook, Momma and Me and You, in celebration of Livia’s 83rd birthday, a milestone the radiant Italian transplant looks nowhere near approaching.
Still, at this moment, all Jan can think about is the plastic container of pre-fermented dough baking on the floor of her hatchback. “I’ve got the starter bread sitting in the car,” she worriedly tells Livia. “I really should bring it in before it explodes in this heat!”
This is not mere good common and practical cooking sense, although Jan has become an Arizona icon by sharing her sweetly spoken advice on each for over 32 years, beginning in 1978 as the Phoenix host of the nationally syndicated PM Magazine, TV’s first news magazine-formatted program, and continuing through three longrunning local lifestyle shows on KTVK Channel 3 before migrating to the city’s NBC affiliate.
There’s a special significance to the sweetbread baking in Jan’s car, which, returning to the café, she cradles in both hands like a treasured heirloom. “It’s a little weird, I know,” she says, lovingly settling the container down on the table between herself and Livia. “I treat it almost like an urn.”
Jan started making the bread four years ago to honor her brother John, who died of a brain aneurysm June 1, 2007, at the age of 40. “Momma took it hard,” she says, after Livia momentarily excuses herself from the table. “So I started this on her birthday four years ago. It’s kind of a way to keep my brother alive, because he’s always with us.”
Johnny's Sweet Friendship Bread is Jan’s personal take on the Amish Friendship Bread tradition, which requires that three cups of an original “mother dough” be stirred every day and fed every five days with flour, sugar and milk, then two cups shared every tenth day with friends and family — who in turn bake their own bread and pass a bit of the leftover dough on to others to do the same.
“It lives on your counter,” she explains. “You go on vacation, and it’s like a kid: you have to have someone babysit it. You have to stir it every day, and every five days you have to feed it. Then every ten days you take one cup out to bake bread or some cookies with, give another cup away, and save the rest to grow it again.”
Jan says that just as her brother’s friendship touched countless lives during his brief time on earth, the starter bread has already spread from her kitchen to those of many of his cherished friends. “Hopefully this will live on for decades,” she says. “Every time we stir it, we think of him.”
Livia returns and Jan burps open the top of the container, taking in a deep breath of the sweet, doughy bouquet. “Oh my gosh, close your eyes and smell this,” she says, holding the container between them. “Mom, you gotta smell this!” Mother and daughter practically rub noses as they draw in close, close their eyes, smile, and together exhale what has to be the world’s sweetest sigh. “Mmmmm!”
Family Happens in the KitchenFood has always been at the center of the D’Atris’ lives. “The Italian tradition is, we live in the kitchen,” says Livia. “I don’t know why they even build a dining room. Our dining room chairs look brand new for 20, 25 years — because we never sit on them! Only for looks. We live in the kitchen!”
On the radio and TV, with her still intact Northern Italian accent and feisty wit, Momma D’Atri comes across as the perfect Central Casting image of the hilariously wise Italian matriarch. “She loves to tell stories,” Jan says. “And they all begin with, ‘When I was a little girl in Treviso…’”
When Jan and Livia launched their own line of biscotti in 2003 and marketed it on QVC, Jan recalls worrying about her talkative mother eating up their precious time on the mighty home shopping network, interfering with the main objective of selling a few cookies. “When you’re one of the lucky two percent who get selected to pitch your product on QVC, they put you through a school at their headquarters in Pennsylvania,” Jan says. “And they drill it in you: ‘You have four minutes. You have to sell $6,000 of product a minute or you’re never coming back.’”
Jan says she practically sank to the floor when the QVC host started out their segment with the question, “So, Momma: Tell me about Italy.”
Unbeknownst to Jan, the producer, working in a control room where every word spoken on the air is electronically measured in real time against the call-in sales volume, was directing the host through his earpiece to simply keep Momma talking. “I’m kicking her in the shins, muttering ‘Sell, sell, sell!’” Jan says with a laugh. “What I didn’t know was that every time she opened her mouth, people loved it. It was the most humbling experience of my life.” Jan says they wound up selling $46,000 worth of My Momma’s Biscotti in six minutes in their debut 1:30 a.m. time slot. Three years later, the dynamic duo sold out $71,000 in cookbooks in the same span, and ultimately Jan and Livia were invited back on QVC a total of 12 times.
No dummy, Jan has wisely featured her mother prominently in her TV and radio shows ever since, and the two have built a mini-empire on her biscotti alone, which is now available in several grocery outlets throughout the state.
But beyond the saleable image, Livia D’Atri is clearly the real deal. As the story goes, having survived Mussolini’s tumultuous rule, the young beauty, lured by the promise of marriage to an Italian butcher living in California who had fallen in love with her picture, she immigrated from Venice to America after World War II carrying little more than the clothes on her back and, of course, a cookbook. “My mother gave it to me as a wedding gift,” she says, rolling off the title in mellifluous Italian. “In English, it means ‘Book of Happiness.’”
Today Livia says what she enjoys most is teaching the art of cooking to liberated Mr. Moms. But back then, pleasing a man’s stomach was truly seen as the quickest path to his heart — an adage which certainly proved true for this self-described “catalog bride.”
Johnny and Livia D’Atri opened their first Italian restaurant in Lake Tahoe in the late ‘50s, and it quickly became a favorite with showbiz names like Jimmy Durante, Louis Prima, Liberace and Nat King Cole. The couple remained happily married until Johnny passed away in Livia’s arms some four decades later.
All along, food was at the center of family activity, though Jan insists all her years spent growing up in the kitchen were about more than simplygood Italian cooking. “Life happens around the kitchen table,” she says. “A boy has broken your heart in third grade. Where do you go? You’re at the kitchen table, where mom’s making the brownies. You’re getting ready for your fi rst date, you’re at the kitchen table. Every event in your life, large or small, gets talked about at the kitchen table. “And food is the panacea,” Jan continues. “‘You got a headache? Eat. Tired? Eat. You’ve got a broken heart? Eat!’ There’s something wonderful when a pasta pot is boiling. When momma’s in the kitchen, life is good.”
Recipes for Happiness Given their inherited passion for food, it’s a marvel that both Jan and Livia have managed to stay so trim and healthy. Livia says it’s not about how much you eat, but what you eat. “I only eat good food, no junk food,” she says. “I raise my own fruits and vegetables in my garden, and I do my own cooking. Coming from the Old Country, I know what is good and what is not good. “But it’s not just the food,” she adds. “I have been into sports all my life. I have played golf, tennis, snow skiing, water skiing, hiking, biking. And that keeps a person active and in good health.”
Jan admits her habits are not as healthy as her mom’s. “I don’t sleep enough, I drink way too much coffee, and I’m a grazer – little tiny meals all day, but good food, always good, natural food,” she says. “I live on coffee, adrenaline and laughter. But I always get a great report back from the doctor.”
At 57, Jan looks remarkably unchanged from her early days on the set. When asked, she swears she’s never had any “work” done. “I don’t do facials. No Botox,” she says. “Mom always taught me never do anything with your face. She says that the less you can touch your face, the better.” “Soap and water,” Livia chimes in. “That’s the best.”
Jan believes the key to staying healthy and beautiful lies in maintaining a positive attitude. She and her husband have never had kids, but their home is filled with the clatter of 21 farm animals, and she says she loves nothing better than hanging out with her chickens — “my girls!” — after a busy day. “I think joy reverses the aging process,” she says. “When you’re happy with your surroundings and accepting and appreciating what you have, you stay healthier. There was a time when I was only planning to be here for a year, and then I was going to move on to bigger and better markets. But then I looked around and I thought, ‘This is pretty doggone good! I’m not going anywhere.’ I’ve seen so many people in my field working their butts off in Chicago, L.A. or New York so that they could eventually come here and have the lifestyle that we enjoy. I decided long ago that this was where I wanted to stay.”
As for the future, Jan plans to continue in broadcasting for as long as the Valley will have her, and Livia pledges to remain on call as her beloved second banana. “This town has been great to me,” Jan says. “For them to still allow me to be on the air for over 30 years — and in high def now? At this age? Amazing! To grow old on the air here is something else. I’ve just been very blessed.”
The two are already working on a follow-up cookbook, which will pool together some of the treasured family recipes and stories sent in by their many fans. “We have found that so many people have lost their moms, their dads and their grandparents, and they miss those moments in their own kitchens,” Jan says. “The Greatest Generation is leaving us, and they didn’t write down their recipes, or their family stories. So we are gathering those family stories and those unique recipes and bringing them back.” Jan and Livia, who get together several times a week and call each other “at least two or three times a day,” Jan says, believe their closeness as mother and daughter is another crucial key to their good health and happiness. “Remember how your mom stirred that pot,” Jan says. “Because one of these days, she’s not going to be there. And those will be the memories you’ll want to savor, and pass on.”
Copyright 2011 Lovin’ Life After 50. Reproduced with permission.
