Sandra Lee was “terrified” when she started dating her now-fiancé, Ben Youcef, admitting it took months before they got hot and heavy.
“I hadn’t been intimate in years and years,” the celebrity chef told Us Weekly in an interview published Tuesday. “I literally felt like a virgin at 55 and I just didn’t want to get involved again.”
Lee, 58, explained that Youcef, 45, was patient and didn’t try to kiss her until they had been dating for two months around the summer of 2021.
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“He finally kissed me and I stood there stone-still,” the Emmy Award winner recalled. “He kept his lips on mine, and my mind just went blank. I still didn’t kiss him back.”
Despite her strange reaction, Youcef stuck around until Lee was ready to take their relationship to the next level.
“He waited and persisted, and here we are,” she said of their three-year relationship.
once the cookbook author pushed past her intimacy issues, it wasn’t long until she and Youcef were spotted heavily packing on the PDA.
“My chemistry with Ben is something that I’ve never had before,” she said. “It’s mental, it’s emotional, and it’s a connection that I can’t even describe.”
Before getting together with Youcef, Lee was in a 14-year relationship with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The pair split in September 2019 after Cuomo allegedly made a mysterious comment, according to Lee.
“I was in my kitchen and he said something, and the minute he said it, I knew what he’d just said. And every window and door closed. And that was it … He knows what it is; I know what it is,” she told Us Weekly.
When asked how Youcef and the former New York governor, 66, were different, the TV personality responded, “Ben is very patient, and he’s very transparent.
“He checks in all the time, and shares everything with me. He loves helping people without agenda or motive. He truly tries to be a better human every day.”
Lee and Youcef got engaged in August 2021 after less than a year of dating and have since been unable to keep their hands off each other as they are often photographed making out in New York City and throughout Europe.
