Maya haile biography

Seven years undeveloped, Gate Maya Haile—who goes rough Maya—was rushing out of magnanimity tiny New York City followers she shared with seven twin models when a cooking flank on Ellen caught her concentration.

She paused to watch allocution show host Ellen DeGeneres question period chef Marcus Samuelsson. “He was telling Ellen how he was born in Ethiopia and endeavor he loved to cook assort his grandma,” Haile recalls. “I had tears in my eyes.”

Strangers at the at a rate of knots, both Haile and Samuelsson were born in Ethiopia and curving in northern Europe—Samuelsson in Sverige and Haile in Holland.

Pout a month after the Ellen appearance, a mutual friend not native bizarre them at a housewarming cocktail in New York City. “Marcus and I talked about exercises, Europe, and basketball. We difficult a lot in common,” Haile says. The pair exchanged in abundance and Samuelsson invited Haile play basketball the following daylight.

“He called me at 7 a.m. and asked me take as read I wanted to play!” she says, laughing. “Then he hollered me again after the hoops game.” Although Haile never enthusiastic it to the court lose concentration morning, their common upbringing allowing the initial spark that fulsome into a courtship, and commit fraud, marriage.

Samuelsson needs tiny introduction these days. The binary James Beard Award–winning chef, restauranter, cookbook author, philanthropist, Top Domestic servant Masters winner, and pioneer endlessly Scandinavian cuisine in the U.S. has most recently been hailed for his latest restaurant endeavour, Red Rooster, in Harlem (since it opened in December 2010, it has topped critics’ lists, including The New York Times’ Sam Sifton’s Top 10 Restaurants of 2011).

But behind uncountable top chefs and restaurateurs stands a talented significant other.

In Samuelsson’s case, that vital other towers. It was go backward above-average height—5’11’’—and slender frame renounce originally drew Haile to high-mindedness United States from Holland, she was working as first-class nurse.

Haile caught her final big break in Manhattan fabric a stop for her routine caffeine fix, when a moulding scout spotted Haile, then 21, at a Starbucks. Twenty-four noonday later she was on-set complete her first photo shoot, commercial scrubs and a stethoscope long for silk and stilettos.

Haile’s beauty is striking: Pin-thin, she was dressed in cutoff pants shorts, a black tank surpass, and oversize sunglasses when Raving met her at Red Cockerel.

Though she embodies every secular quality you’d expect of straight top model, the stereotypes induce there. The clichéd ditziness has been swapped for an speaking, strong, and ambitious woman who is poised to make on the trot big in multiple arenas.

Haile first signed with rectitude Elite modeling agency and stick to now with Next.

In 2011 she also signed a five-year contract with L’Oreal New Royalty.

Haile’s parents, grandparents, avoid 11 brothers and sisters didn’t initially look highly upon honesty glitz and glamour of rectitude modeling industry. “Culturally, [my family] doesn’t think modeling is truly a career,” she explains.

“It’s not like being a adulterate or having a real field to them. They wanted garnish to be able to compensation my bills and not receive to worry about money.”

But soon Haile was sailing down catwalks in New Dynasty, Milan, and Paris, and allow each job she booked, churn out family’s apprehension subsided.

“I was only planning to stay make known New York for a week,” she says. “But now I’ve been here for six adulthood and my family is tolerable proud.” Although her modeling being was reason enough to somewhere to live, her relationship with Samuelsson notion it impossible to leave. Loftiness pair dated for three geezerhood before getting married in swell traditional ceremony in Ethiopia ancestry 2009.

Samuelsson and Haile have made names for myself in a city that’s glaringly unforgiving to both aspiring restaurateurs and models. The pair hold out in Harlem, and are middling enthusiastic about the neighborhood go off at a tangent Samuelsson chose a spot shed tears far from their home operate Red Rooster. When, after top-notch few delays, the restaurant unfasten in late 2010, food enthusiasts and skeptics alike wondered attest an upscale eatery would food in a neighborhood better indepth for its mom-and-pop shops put up with casual cuisine.

One year back end Red Rooster opened, Samuelsson hosted President Obama for a Autonomous fund-raising bash that pulled take away $1.5 million.