RECIPE FOR SUCCESS:Ingredients for a great friendship

One afternoon when I was a little girl, my mom was watching The Mike Douglas Show. The program featured millionaire businessmen. One of the guests was a new millionaire named John Crean. She told that story to John years later and remembered that when she saw him on TV, she felt a connection to him and didn’t know why. How strange that many years later we’d be on TV cooking up laughs!

This Fourth of July would have been John’s 83rd birthday, and as it approaches, I remember my friend with smiles and fond memories.

For the last 17 years, my friendship with John Crean took me places that I never would have imagined.

We taped 228 episodes of our comedy cooking show, “At Home on the Range.” John used to say that the show was like a train wreck — you knew you shouldn’t be watching, but you couldn’t look away.

Though we couldn’t cook, there was a magical chemistry that we had as friends. The audience was attracted to the honesty in our relationship and the vast differences in our personalities. Off camera, John and I developed a trust and friendship that is still hard to put into words today.

I write about my friend today because friendships change who we are and how we evolve as people. They make us better humans.

John taught me to look for the honesty in every situation, and there I would find the answer to any problem. “If you keep your side of the street clean,” he’d say, “you’ll never lose any sleep.”

The show became a local phenomenon and was syndicated all over the world. Who knew a reality cooking show from a garage in Newport Beach would be so far reaching and touch so many lives?

One night during one of our tapings, a woman in the audience approached us after the show. She told us that she had just lost her son to AIDS about a year ago. She was devastated by the loss, and one night she stumbled on our late-night cooking show. She heard herself laughing out loud and realized it was the first time since her son had died that she had laughed. She wanted to thank us personally for putting the laughter back in her life.

Over the years, folks shared that we helped them as they recovered from illnesses and divorces because they knew at least once a night they would forget their problems and laugh with us.

Here was our “recipe” for a successful friendship:

I never imagined a time when he wouldn’t be here for me. But through great loss you discover an inner strength and peacefulness. So this Fourth of July as the fireworks light up the sky, I will remember my friend John Crean and the bright explosion of adventure he brought to my life.