QVC Host David Venable Reveals the Moment That Changed His Life (2024)

Ican hear his signature TV-ready voice from the other end of the hallway. "Hello, hello! Come on in," QVC’s David Venable declares as I enter the dining room at QVC headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His tall stature — even grander than what you see on TV — matches his larger-than-life personality.

Within 30 seconds he shakes my hand, double-checks that I have a drink to sip on, and encourages me to tuck into some pickle dip, one of the recipes from his new cookbook, Comfort Food Shortcuts. The In the Kitchen with David host is a self-described "food pusher," a trait he credits to his mom, Sarah. Indeed, he's turned his "food pushing" strategy into a multi-million dollar business at QVC — and he’s pushed culinary icons like Rachael Ray and Ina Garten into millions of viewers' homes across the country.

It doesn't take long for David to start telling me all about his love affair with food. In fact, I’m just two bites into my mozzarella and tomato flatbread (another one of his creations) when he brings up how he fell in love with food in the first place. “I was raised by a single mom, so she was raising three kids alone and I like to say that she was doing supermarket shortcuts before they were cool because she had to,” he explains. “She taught all of us to cook when we were little because she needed help in the kitchen. I was the one who kept making my way back into the kitchen.”

His North Carolina upbringing is at his core, and every question circles back to his roots. It's hard for the host to go a day without mentioning his mom and her famed pot roast, or his grandmother and her chicken and dumplings. “Every time I taste something close to the way she made it, suddenly I’m 10 years old again tugging on her apron in her kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina.” This feeling — the excitement, the community, the nostalgia — is what David aims to bring into our homes every week with his show, In the Kitchen with David. His motivation is simple: “Food is where the conversation begins but not always where it ends.”

Before joining QVC 25 years ago, David worked as a reporter for local news outlets across the southeast. Then at 28, he hit “a series of crossroads,” which ultimately got him thinking about working at the e-commerce giant. “When I was in news, I was at my best when I was doing live shots. Not scripted. Not reading a teleprompter. When David could be more David. I thought, ‘what can I do in television that allows me to do that?’”

At the time, he was anchoring the mid-day news in Altoona, Pennsylvania, just 240 miles west of the QVC headquarters. One day, during his lunch break, he stumbled across a feature on QVC in the local paper, The Altoona Mirror. He suddenly thought of his mother and the gifts from QVC that she had sent him through the years. After discovering that many of the hosts had local news backgrounds, he sent in a tape, auditioned the next week, and was hired two weeks later.

“At the audition, I had to bring an item of my own choosing and then arrive thirty minutes early to look over an item of their choosing. The item they wanted me to present was a gold necklace — and I didn’t know anything about jewelry,” he said. “I sat there kind of dejected while looking at the questions I had to answer about the necklace: What does it look like? What does it feel like? To whom would you give it as a gift? With what would you wear it? And so on.”

In that moment, he discovered what QVC was all about: “So much of what we’re doing is relating the product with storytelling and romancing the item. Sure, I can learn how a product is made and tell somebody about it. What [the viewers] really want to see is how they can relate to this item and not be stumped by it.” He credits his entire 25-year career at QVC to one line he came up with during that audition: “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a gift in 14-carat gold.”

In the Kitchen with David airs on QVC every Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET and Sunday at noon ET, and reaches, on average, over 1 million U.S. households each episode, according to ComScore — a testament to his way with words but even more so, with people. “He’ll never describe a product better than it is. He’ll tell it like it is,” says Stacey Stauffer, a QVC host and longtime colleague of David’s. “He really becomes our customer’s friend. We don’t even call them customers; we call them foodies. I can’t imagine a team at a department store having the kind of connection that we have with our customers but we’ve got it and it’s just wonderful.”

That foodie friendship is what sets David apart. “He’s appointment television in this day and age where appointment television doesn’t exist anymore. They might not buy anything on the show but they’ll watch him as if he was a comedy on a national network,” Stacey beams. Even with e-commerce giants like Amazon taking over, David believes that his show — and QVC as a whole — will always have value.

He gives tirelessly to his audience — even on Thanksgiving and Christmas, David is putting on a show. But the 54-year-old says he feels like he gets so much in return. For example, during his “Christmas in July” episode last summer, a viewer named Annette called in and completely changed David's life, according to him. “She said, ‘David, I love watching the show. You’re so much fun. I have to thank you and the other hosts because you do such a nice job describing things because I’m blind,’” he says with clear emotion in his voice. Annette then asked the lovable host to describe his signature Happy Dance to her.

David's fan-favorite Happy Dance started nearly 10 years ago (or so he remembers) when something made his tastebuds, well, happy. With a quick spin, wild arm circles, and the line “get it, get it, get it,” this dance turned into David’s signature move — and Annette wanted to know what all the hype was about.

"I teared up when she asked that question. It lumped my throat. So I described it to her. If I stay at QVC another 15 minutes or 15 years, it’ll be the most special moment that we’ve ever experienced on live television here at QVC,” he recalls.

But even with tears in his eyes, he doesn't skip a beat. “Now, let me tell you about this lasagna…”

But with his always-cheery persona, the Happy Dance, that diehard fan base — it all makes you wonder what he’s really like behind closed doors. “After I’ve talked all day, the last thing I want is to talk,” he admits. “I simply want a television talking to me or I want no one talking at all." He’s famously kept his private life out of the spotlight throughout his career, and he plans to keep it that way. "My life and my work is very public so it’s nice to have time that’s just completely off the grid. I love what I do but it’s necessary to have downtime, too."

Order Comfort Food Shortcuts on QVC!

Right now, David doesn't have much downtime, but he's thrilled about it. His third cookbook,Comfort Food Shortcuts: An "In the Kitchen with David" Cookbook hit shelves on December 4. By November 19, the cookbook had racked up 165,300 pre-orders, which was massive compared to the total sales of his first two cookbooks, which sold 276,058 and 207,511 books, respectively (as of October 2018).

His latest release is packed with easy-to-follow recipes and supermarket shortcuts, like roasted and glazed butternut squash and Sprite-sweetened peach enchiladas, a recipe that David borrowed from Gerry, a member of his mom's close-knit circle of friends, aptly named "The Golden Girls."

Plus, of course, he has his show, which requires an enormous amount of prep work. Right before he goes on, David always meets with each vendor being showcased on his four-hour broadcast, to go over product details and last-minute changes — everything from the dimensions of a casserole dish to the ingredients in a loaf of bread. On the day I visited the set, there are people running food in and out of the kitchen, a casual visit from Martha Stewart (!), and just about every cooking gadget you could imagine. It's a well-oiled machine, yet somehow, there's still time for David to be David.

"So, David we were thinking of having some of these beautiful apple fritters on this baking sheet," someone from production pipes up.

"No, no, no. Go for French fries. Everyone loves French fries," he says with a smile.