Editor’s Note:
We interviewed our March cover subject, Daphne Oz, in early February. Since then, she’s had some very good news: Oz gave birth to a girl on February 26, 2014. The baby weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces.
For more on Daphne Oz, check out her dream nursery and some Wisdom of Oz on having a happy and healthy pregnancy.
A very pregnant Daphne Oz may be well into her third trimester, but when it’s time to strike a pose she’s ready to play with a bouquet of colorful oversized balloons gathered beside her. One of the co-hosts of ABC’s daytime foodie fest “The Chew,” Oz has already shot an episode on one very cold afternoon in late January, yet somehow still seems to have plenty of energy for New York Family’s cover shoot, taking place at Classic Kids Photography on the Upper East Side. When asked to leap for a photo, the 28-year-old Oz quips to the photographer: “You’ve never been pregnant before, have you?” She then gamely grabs on to a floating blue orb—and takes the leap.
But don’t read too much into Oz’s choice of balloon colors. While she and her husband, John Jovanovic, are expectant and hopeful about the big new adventure that awaits them, they’ve decided to discover the sex of their first child when she or he arrives. In the meantime, they’re tending to their respective careers—he works in finance and is wrapping up his M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School—and getting ready for the baby.
The couple has been together since meeting as undergrads at Princeton University, where Oz penned her first book, The Dorm Room Diet. As she describes it, the book chronicled her path from “a 180-lb high school senior” to “a 150-lb college sophomore,” while offering college students a practical game plan for healthy living. As things have turned out, that book was the initial foray into a career she loves—a combo of wellness and media which, of course, runs in the family, with her father being Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, the noted cardiothoracic surgeon and TV personality better know to the world as Dr. Oz.
While her dad’s television career took off when he became a regular on “Oprah,” Oz’s own big break came in August 2010: while en route to the airport for her honeymoon, she received a call from a producer of “The Chew” asking her to read for the talk show’s pilot.
“This show is so perfect for me and so much fun and so exactly in my wheelhouse of things I love to talk about and do,” Oz says. “But there was no guarantee that a show like this would come along and that the geniuses who made it would think to put me in it. The whole thing was just so fortuitous and serendipitous. I just got so lucky.”
ABC’s hour-long daily talk show dedicated to all things food airs on weekdays at 1pm EST, and 12pm PST and CST. Oz describes it as “a party in the kitchen.” She is joined by former “Top Chef” competitor Carla Hall, entertaining expert Clinton Kelly (of “What Not To Wear” fame), and two culinary icons: restaurateurs and “Iron Chef America” stars Mario Batali and Michael Symon. “We’re a group of wackadoo, eccentric friends, who—as Mario puts it—would never have picked each other as bunkmates because we seem so different on the surface but put us together in a room and it’s magic,” Oz says. The “magic” sure seems to be working: now in its third season, “The Chew’s” ratings have been climbing steadily since the show began.
What is Oz’s role in the so-called “wackadoo” group? “I’m the person who’s there to find the healthiest way to do something without sacrificing flavor, indulgence, and fun and sexiness in our food,” she explains.
No doubt viewers are charmed by Oz’s warm, fun-loving personality as well. As she did with The Dorm Room Diet, and with her second book, the 2013 New York Times bestseller, Relish: An Adventure in Food, Style, and Everyday Fun, Oz has a knack for mining her own life to inspire and advise others, and this generosity for sharing shines through on the show. She’s also there to remind the professional chefs what it’s like to be a home cook with a family and a tight timeline.
Not that Oz is without her own impressive credentials in food and wellness. Since graduating from Princeton she added on degrees from the Natural Gourmet Institute and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, both in the city. And then there was her childhood education.
“I grew up in a very health-centric environment, so I learned a lot by osmosis,” Oz says. “But [as an adult] I wanted to expand my knowledge of alternative therapies and get a broad exposure to all the different ways people think about health,” she explains. “When I got my culinary degree, I started to grow this idea that food is the basis of health.”
Given her passion for food and healthy living, one can’t help but wonder what Oz’s pregnancy diet looks like. “I haven’t been overly restrictive with myself—I’m actually craving a good balance of the nutritious and indulgent,” she says. Her typical menu starts off with a healthy smoothie for breakfast (think frozen fruit, almond milk or yogurt, spinach or kale, flax, and chia seeds). Then at work she’ll have some toast with almond butter or avocado, while steadily drinking a veggie-packed green juice throughout the day. Lunch is a big kale salad with avocado and lean protein, while her cravings for pizza and fried chicken tend to kick in come dinnertime.
Though “The Chew” viewers have watched her waistline expand, Oz says it hasn’t made her self-conscious. If anything, just the opposite.
“I’ve been eating whatever I want and wearing what I want, feeling so comfortable and powerful in my body,” she says. “It took being pregnant to show me how much unconditional love and respect I could have for my body. You’re growing a human—you’re doing a lot.”
Fortunately for Oz, her pregnancy has been a charmed one except for some very light morning sickness during her first trimester. “Since month three on the dot I have felt totally myself and better. I have a lot of energy, my hormones have changed and I’m just cheery all the time,” she says. Oz also marvels at the fact that the baby has turned her into a morning person thanks to some well-timed kicking and a ravenous appetite.
It’s a good thing that pregnancy suits Oz, because, as she proudly divulges, she’d love to have a very big family—big as in seven children. She believes that being part of a large brood (she’s one of four and her mom is one of six) was a major factor in her happiness growing up. “There’s always someone to hang out with and that to me was the most important thing I wanted to recreate once I was starting my own family,” she explains. “And it wasn’t that my husband and I were planning to be pregnant right now, but I couldn’t think of a better time.”
Looking ahead to the kind of parent she’d like to be, Oz suspects she’ll take a lot of inspiration from her own parents, while doing some things a little differently. She admires her dad’s sense of playfulness. “He always wanted to play games and wanted everything to be a competition, and he thought of things in a kid-like way,” she recalls. “He made up bedtime stories every night, and when he and my mom would go traveling they’d bring home beautiful trinkets that he’d make up stories about.”
Her mom, Lisa—a fellow author and TV personality—was “a strong woman” who was always encouraging her kids to push more, learn more, and “not to accept things blindly.” While Oz would love to mirror these qualities, she herself plans to be a slightly stricter parent. When her father was in residency the family didn’t eat together until 10pm or so, which left her grazing all evening long. “I want to have set meal times, because I think it’s important,” she notes.
Presently, Oz lives in the city, where she’s been since her college graduation in 2008, but she’s not sure she’ll raise her family here. “It remains to be seen. My preschool teacher is still in business. She’s the reason I loved to learn,” she says. “I would love for my kids to go to that Montessori school if it’s still around when they’re at that age and that’s in New Jersey.”
As are her parents, with whom Oz is as close as ever. “I talk to my mom daily and to my dad all the time about the baby and what to expect and just how I’m feeling. They are as excited as I am, they just can’t wait,” she says.
Not surprisingly, one of Oz’s favorite pieces of pregnancy wisdom came from them. “The first advice my parents gave me when I got pregnant was: ‘Don’t worry,’” she says. “They know that I love to read and that I feel more comfortable when I think I have all the facts. They knew it would be my base instinct to go research everything. Their thought to me was: ‘Look, the most damaging thing you can do for this baby is to have stress hormones coursing through the blood all around it. You want to be relaxed, enjoy this process. You’ll never get to be pregnant for the first time ever again, so just relish the opportunity to have people around you helping you and being supportive of you and don’t worry.’”
It sounds like her parents were on the mark, as Oz is the first to admit that she has a tendency to fret. “If I have one regret in life it’s all the time I’ve spent worrying,” she says. Looking ahead to being a mom, she adds, “I really want to prioritize my time and weed out all the energy pitfalls and time wasters and just enjoy my time with the people I love.”
Fans of Oz needn’t worry either: she’s planning to return full-time to “The Chew” following her maternity leave. “I love that people feel like they’re part of the friendship that we all have [on the show],” she says. “Because it’s such a real show and so authentic in that way, it’s important for me to share what I struggle with in my life…and most importantly, what I’ve been able to succeed at. Success in a vacuum is not fun. If you can’t share those experiences with someone else, what’s the point?”
Here’s an easy prediction: Daphne Oz fans should get ready to hear a lot about the joys and challenges of motherhood. We have no doubt she’ll deliver (pun intended).
