Stephanie Hansen’s two-decade journey to becoming ‘kind of famous’

On a Saturday morning in 2008, Stephanie Hansen punched the “on air” button at FM 107.1 with some trepidation. Back then, the loudest voices of the Twin Cities’ female-focused talk station were two boisterous blondes gabbing about sex and celebrities. Hansen was carving fresh territory with her new food show, “Weekly Dish.”

The Twin Cities’ “foodie scene,” as the New York Times described it, had gained national notice; international celebrity chefs were serving edible gold and gracing local magazine covers. And while the culinary community was punching above its weight, Hansen’s position in it was tenuous.

Her previous 107 show, in a coveted weekday slot, had just been canceled. The new Saturday gig seemed, on its face, like a gimmick: pairing another set of boisterous blondes who, in this case, shared the same name.

Hansen was sharing the mic with Stephanie March, a restaurant industry veteran who would become the longtime food editor of Mpls.St.Paul magazine. “Stephanie was the expert, and I was the eater, and I had a lot of impostor syndrome about only being the eater,” Hansen recalled. “Back then people were really excited about chefs and restaurateurs, and no one was really talking about the lady cooking at home.”

This home-cooking lady wasn’t a chef or a restaurant critic. Or a budding food influencer about to be anointed by the algorithms. Hansen knew that she and the women’s gossip station played a bit part in the food-media universe.

Likening herself to the basement-dwelling stapler guy from “Office Space,” Hansen just kept showing up. Over the next two decades, she took her enthusiastic, folksy foodie persona to more platforms, creating a website, podcasts and a Substack. “I had to do it myself because nobody saw me,” she said.

And then, finally, they did. In the past few years, Hansen has published a two-volume cookbook (the second one arrives this week) and landed a nationally syndicated television show. Now some call her the Paula Deen of Midwestern home cooking. “I’ve been under everyone’s nose all along,” she said. “And all of a sudden the stars aligned and everything shone on me.”

Cooking segments are filmed in Hansen’s home kitchen, with her husband and dog passing through shots as she whips up taco braids or bacon-cheeseburger Tater-Tot “muffins.” While introducing her audience to new recipes and local food makers, Hansen is unafraid to express an unpopular opinion. (On trendy matcha: “I think it tastes like grass.”) Or dole out a cheesy compliment. (“Everything here is T-rex size, including your arm muscles!”) She visibly delights in flipping over a pan of brownies and popping out a flawless slab. Ta dah!

Hansen felt destined for the bright lights growing up in Bloomington, helping her mom make chili mac. At 12, she auditioned at Children’s Theatre Company. “I was like, ‘I’m a performer,’ ” she recalled. “But then, you know, life intervenes.”

Her parents divorced. Her eldest sister died in a car crash. Hansen worked as a roller-skating waitress, fell in love with her manager and eventually married him.

Hansen spent the first half of her career selling ads at Minnesota media companies. Her first on-air gig was with her former sales colleague Julia Cobbs, who had become half of 107’s flagship “Lori & Julia” show and invited Hansen to do entertainment segments. That led to Hansen briefly co-hosting her own 107 show, a slot she lost to Jason Matheson, who would go on to star in Fox 9’s “The Jason Show.”

That setback set the stage for Hansen’s foodie debut. But “Weekly Dish” could have ended as quickly as it started when, at age 42, Hansen was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer — the same disease that had killed her mother. Hansen continued to broadcast (and help her husband run a printing and marketing company they’d started) while in treatment, going bald in public. She’s now been in remission for more than a decade and tries not to take anything for granted. “I really learned a lot about living by almost dying,” she said.

The new volume features regional staples such as meatloaf and hotdish, plus a beer-cheese/wild-rice soup that could become one. Cabin owners between Fargo and Green Bay should expect to be gifted the set.

The pandemic also renewed people’s interest in cooking, which led Hansen to become the resident foodie on “The Jason Show.” (Earlier, Hansen had filled in as Matheson’s radio co-host and found they had a good chemistry — and no hard feelings that he’d taken her spot.)

In helping home cooks feel more comfortable, Hansen found her footing in the culinary world. “I remembered feeling at home in my skin, finally, in the food space,” she said. “And my space was as the eater, to be the person that’s just like you.”

Hansen’s weekly TV segments with Matheson led to “Taste Buds.” On both shows, she hopes to gently upgrade viewers from, say, the green can of Parmesan cheese to a block of the authentic. Hansen freely shares her knowledge, but also her foibles. She might be pronouncing Sriracha wrong, but most of the rest of us are, too.

Matheson tells Hansen that her high-low blend is one of the reasons she connects so well with audiences. “Even when you’re shi-shi poo-poo, you recognize when you’re shi-shi poo-poo,” he said on a recent show.

Through hard work and persistence, Hansen willed her personal brand into existence, media platform by media platform. “I was always looking for, ‘Is this the thing that’s gonna catapult me into where my peers are in this space?’ ”

Admittedly, sometimes it stung to be outside the inner circle, like when only March would receive a coveted restaurant-preview invite, due to her magazine role. (“We actually had a fight once where I screamed, ‘I’m tired of being the Jan to your Marcia,’ ” Hansen said, making a “Brady Bunch” reference.)

March says she’s impressed by Hansen’s ability to learn and grow and make things happen. And the way she invites her audience to try new things and be OK with messing up. “Food was her language, and she just had to figure out a way to use it that fit her personality and her authenticity,” March said.

In decades past, being a Minnesota food personality seemed to require a New York City pedigree — TV star Andrew Zimmern cooked under chef Thomas Keller, radio doyenne Lynne Rossetto Kasper taught at Le Cordon Bleu. Then social media swung the pendulum and a content creator could rocket to fame with a random, two-second noodle slurp.

The next evolution of food media may see celebrities taking over, Hansen says, citing new cooking shows from singer Selena Gomez and royal Meghan Markle, whose approach to hosting includes decanting snacks. “It’s like, geez, are you really gonna get a million followers because you just put a bag of pretzels in a different bag of pretzels,” Hansen mused, noting that, in the cutthroat attention economy, others are surely questioning if she’s worthy of so many eyeballs. “It’s ironic that I have those thoughts, because that’s what someone’s thinking about me,” she said.

Hansen is simply glad that she can direct the attention bestowed on her toward the Midwest’s vibrant culinary community.

“We’ve been flyover country for so long, but we have this amazing food scene,” Hansen said, nodding to the region’s agricultural history and cultural diversity. “That somehow I get to be the person that helps facilitate that people see us, feels amazing.”