Inside the Personal Life of Julia Child: Her Marriage and Children

Julia Child was an American chef, novelist, and television personality who died in 2004 with a net worth of $50 million (adjusted for inflation). Her first cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” was released in 1961 and is credited with popularizing French food in America. She went on to create 16 other cookbooks as well as the memoir “My Life in France,” which was published posthumously in 2006.

Julia appeared on a variety of television shows, including the Emmy-winning “The French Chef” (1963-1973), “In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs” (1995-1996), and “Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home” (1999-2000). Child was played by Meryl Streep in Nora Ephron’s 2009 film “Julie & Julia.”

Who was Julia Child married to?

Julia Child married Paul Cushing Child in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1946. The pair met while Paul was stationed at the Office of Strategic Services in Kandy, Ceylon. They relocated to Washington, D.C., and Paul was assigned as an exhibits officer in Paris after joining the United States Foreign Service. Julia studied cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu while living in France, gr aduating in 1951.

After Paul retired in 1961, the couple relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paul died in a nursing home in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1994, after a protracted illness. The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and Culinary Arts was established the following year “to further her far-reaching impact as a teacher and mentor after her death.

Following her death in 2004, the Julia Child Foundation began granting contributions to nonprofit groups and bestowing the Julia Child Award.

Meanwhile, Julia traveled to New York City after college to work as a copywriter in the advertising department of W. & J. Sloane. She worked as a typist for the Office of Strategic Services in 1942 since she was too tall to join the United States Navy’s WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) or the Women’s Army Corps.

Child was eventually promoted to a top-secret researcher under OSS head General William J. Donovan, and she also worked for the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section as a file clerk and assistant to shark repellent developers.

Julia was awarded the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service while serving as the chief of the OSS Secretariat’s Registry. When sharks set off too many underwater OSS explosives, Child rectified the problem by experimenting with various concoctions scattered near the explosives. According to reports, this shark repellant is still in use today.

Julia studied with renowned chefs such as Max Bugnard after entering the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, and she joined Le Cercle des Gourmettes, a women’s cooking society. There, she met Simone Beck, who asked Child to help her with a French cookbook for Americans she was co-writing with her friend Louisette Bertholle.