Why Rachael Ray Was Once Accused Of Having An Affair With Jay-Z

Rachael Ray's fame might have peaked in 2016, and it was not because of her tasty recipes. The celebrity chef was the accidental target of harassment from Beyoncé's fans, who thought Ray was the woman with whom Jay-Z supposedly had a speculated affair. Ray was stung by the singer's fanbase, the Beyhive, en masse, with fans posting bee and lemon emojis on Ray's social media to prove their solidarity to Beyoncé. But the swarm of hate was soon regretted.

It all started when Beyoncé dropped her 2016 album "Lemonade," which featured the anthem "Sorry" about Jay-Z's rumored infidelity with a woman the singer described as "Becky with the good hair." According to Dictionary.com, "Becky" is used as a slang term to describe a generic-looking white woman. The internet soon became rife with theories on who this mystery "Becky" was, with many assuming Beyoncé was referring to fashion designer Rachel Roy ... do you see where this is going?

Unfortunately for Ray, the torch and pitchfork-bearing Beyhive mistook the culinary TV personality for the fashion designer and began relentlessly mocking Ray in the comment section of her Instagram posts at the time. "We on your a** Ray!!!!" one person wrote beside a bunch of bee emojis. While most of the comments seem to have been deleted, one X (formerly known as Twitter) user captured the chaos and posted it, writing, "Lmfaooooo people are getting Rachael Ray and Rachel Roy confused noo [sic]."

Let's just say Rachael Ray can never make lemonade again without chuckling. It was eventually clear to every confused Beyoncé fan that Ray was not the one they should've been after. On the other hand, Rachel Roy reportedly did have a previous close connection with Jay-Z and was even thought to be the catalyst for the infamous Solange-Jay elevator fight — a scandal revealed thanks to E! News. As for all the behind-the-scenes drama between the music moguls, Ray told Yahoo! News in 2018: "It's none of my beeswax. No pun intended!"

The "EVOO" coiner admittedly felt flattered that so many people thought she had that much sway in the music industry. "I thought that was hilarious," she said. "I guess I looked at that as the most ultimate backward compliment — just the idea that anybody would think that I groove in a universe where I get to hang out with Jay-Z or Beyoncé or all that. To me it was like, 'People think I'm cool enough to go to places where any of this would happen?'"

If anything, the incident garnered Ray even more fans, especially from how she responded to the accidental hate. Her humor was enough not to take offense to the comments and make lemonade out of the very sour lemons she was dealt — literally. The culinary star seemingly posted a fitting comeback to the drama on Instagram, when she didn't mention it directly but shared a photo of some beautiful jars of lavender lemonade. "This was her reply," someone said in the comments with a laugh.