Serving up JOY

Ayurvedic ambassador and plant-based chef Radhi Devlukia-Shetty on her constant pursuit of a purposeful life.

- LINDSAY TUCKER

RADHI DEVLUKIA-SHETTY just got a DM from one of her 1.2 million Instagram followers. She reads it to me: “You’re in my city! My friends just ran into you at lunch!” We’ve just finished lunch at a trendy Denver vegan restaurant (she was “born vegetarian” and transitioned to veganism after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s New York Times bestseller Eating Animals) where we were approached by two 20-somethings. They’re hoping to snag a selfie with the 31-year-old Ayurvedic ambassador and plant-based chef whom they recognized from the Internet. “We’re huge fans of you and Jay,” the girls confess, leaning in close despite the pandemic to capture photographic evidence of this chance encounter with their Internet crush.

Jay is Devlukia-Shetty’s husband, Jay Shetty, a life coach, author of the best-selling Think Like a Monk, and host of the On Purpose Podcast. When they married five years ago, Jay was already well on his way to international fame as a media personality touting motivational messages of purpose and positivity. In the early stages of their marriage, Devlukia-Shetty says she was most known for being “Jay’s wife,” but she’s making a name for herself as a culinarian and Ayurvedic virtuoso offering recipes, clean-beauty rituals, and wellness tutorials through her social media channels and on her website. She created the latter during the pandemic as a way of sharing her purpose and legitimizing the work she’s putting out into the world.