Comfort Food with Kelly Rizzo

Kelsey Cook on Comedy, Grief, and How Bob Saget Helped Her Get a Big Break

September 9, 2026·59 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

Kelly sits down with comedian Kelsey Cook, whose brand new Netflix special Happy Hour is out right now and it is absolutely spectacular. Kelsey grew up in the most wonderfully bizarre household: her parents met at a professional foosball tournament, her mom is literally in the Foosball Hall of Fame, and her dad toured Europe and Hawaii as an International Yo-Yo Man. But underneath all that quirk was a painful childhood divorce that gave Kelsey the kind of dark fuel most comedians run on.Then Kelly and Kelsey get into the full-circle moment of how Bob became a mentor early in Kelsey's career, and what his generosity meant to a young comic just trying to get in the door. It is a truly beautiful conversation.And then things get really real. Kelsey opens up about her mom's frontotemporal dementia, a rarer and often misunderstood form of the disease that can strike people in their 60s, and the night a routine emergency surgery during the pandemic changed everything overnight. Two women who have experienced two very different kinds of grief sit down and get incredibly honest about what the long goodbye actually looks like.Go watch Happy Hour on Netflix. It's HILARIOUS. Follow Kelly on Instagram @kellyrizzoFollow Kelsey on Instagram @kelseycookcomedyThank you to Lifeway Foods for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about Lifeway visit. https://lifewaykefir.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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