Top Chef's Tom Colicchio Opens Up About Raising His Young Sons: 'They Test Boundaries' (Exclusive)

After spending most of his life in kitchens, it’s no surprise that Tom Colicchio met his wife in a restaurant.

Long-standing A top chef the judge told PEOPLE — during the annual Food and wine Classic in Aspen June 14-16 — about how he met his wife, 22 years his junior, Lori Silverbush.

Colicchio, 61, explained that he met Silverbush in 1994 shortly after he opened the New York hot spot Gramercy Tavern, which was just honored at a pop-up dinner at Food and wine Classic to celebrate the restaurant’s 30th anniversary.

“She worked there,” he says. “She worked as a waitress, completing graduate studies as a writer, screenwriter and film director.”

Lori Silverbush and Tom Colicchio at the New York screening of “The Whale” at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on November 29, 2022 in New York City.

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“We met and fell in love a few years later,” he adds.

Silverbush supplemented her filmmaking dreams and education at NYU Cinematography by working at Colicchio’s restaurant. Back in 2001, Silverbush said The New York Times that she could tell the restaurateur “needed someone to talk to” and the relationship turned romantic from there. During the years of their relationship, Silverbush left Gramercy Tavern to be a full-time director, and Colicchio worked on cookbooks and opened multiple restaurants. On September 15, 2001, the couple married in an intimate ceremony on Martha’s Vineyard.

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Now the couple lives in Brooklyn with their two sons, Luke, 14, and Mateo, 13. (Colicchio has a third son, Dante, 31, from a previous relationship.) When asked how he feels about having two teenagers in the house, Colicchio is happy to reported that “it’s actually going well”.

“They’re pretty easy for teenagers,” he laughs. “Yes, they do teenage things, they test the boundaries, but they’re good kids.”

The best part about raising a teenager in New York? You don’t have to worry about driving.

“I think raising kids in the city is pretty good. First of all, right now I would be worried about whether my 15-year-old will drive next year,” he says of Luka, who turns 15 in August. “It won’t be driven in the city.”

None of his younger children seem to have caught the culinary bug — “My youngest doesn’t eat,” jokes Colicchio — but Dante followed his father into the restaurant business.

“He’s a bartender. He’s really into mixology,” says the chef.

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Source: HIS Education