Celebrity Mound

Rachael Ray is hitting back at tabloid rumors that her marriage is on the rocks.

During a taping of her talk show Monday, the normally bubbly cook said that constant reports about the state of her marriage to John Cusimano are starting to upset her, an observer tells PEOPLE.

“Everybody gossips … but this stuff is hurting people’s feelings who are in our families and friends of ours,” Ray told the audience on the show, set to air Friday. “They worry about us.”

Continued Ray, 39, “There’s always someone that’s going to be telling stories behind your back, but this is too much.”

She also told the audience, “The tabloids won’t stop printing this junk until people stop buying it.”

A spokesperson for Ray confirms to PEOPLE that she spoke about the tabloid rumors, and adds, “Rachael and John have never been happier.”

According to another source, during a recent appearance in New York to promote her newly released cookbook Just in Time, Ray was asked multiple times by fans if her marriage was in trouble.

“John actually showed up at the book signing and they looked very much in love,” says the source. “I bet she finally decided she needed to let her fans know she was alright and that the lies being written about her were just that, lies.”

(source)

Rachael Ray’s hubby Cringes over kinky sex affair charge

John Cusimano, the rocker hubby of TV food queen Rachael Ray, is spitting mad over tabloid reports that he had a kinky affair with a Florida woman, whom he supposedly paid to spit on him!

“I really can’t even comment on that,” said Cusimano, who will be in town Friday with his band The Cringe to play Harper’s Ferry in Allston. “I don’t even want to give them any sort of credibility by even commenting. That’s all I can say.”

In case you missed it, Jeaninne Walz, 30, told the National Enquirer that she’s been having a bizarre romp with Cusimano since the start of his marriage to Ray that included spitting, rubbing her feet in his face and other kinky stuff. But Cusimano said he and his bride don’t take the salacious supermarket-rag scuttlebutt too seriously.

“We laugh at it. That’s what we do,” he said.

Well good for them! Sadly, the Food Network star won’t be in the house when Cusimano’s band hits the stage in Allston because she’s on her own tour – pushing her new book – in Chicago.

“If she’s around and we play a gig she’s always there,” he said. “But she has her own stuff.”

And so does John. A practicing attorney who does a lot of his wife’s merchandising and licensing deals, Cusimano said he’s trying to give the music thing a go for “the foreseeable future,” to see if The Cringe can hit it big.

“Playing in bands is something I’d just be doing regardless of what I do during the day,” he said. “At night, I put on my Bat costume – or whatever you want to call it – and turn into a rock star.”

The band is getting set to release its second album, “Tipping Point” in February on Sony’s Red label and has a pack of club dates scheduled in the new year.

“We have sort of a classic rock/ alt rock kind of sound,” he said. “Our inspirations would be The Who, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam.”

And the band’s drummer, Shawn Pelton of the “Saturday Night Live” band, has played with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Luciano Pavarotti.

“He’s awesome,” said Cusimano.

The Cringe had a few minor hits with their first, independently released album, including a tune called “Burn” that Cusimano wrote for Ray. It’s not, he insists, about her cooking.

“It’s about the burning desire you have for someone, how you burn for them when they’re around or not around, if they’re near you or far away.”

Yum-o!

File Under: Cringe Worthy?