Today, Paula Deen’s empire includes two restaurants, two television shows, five cookbooks, a cooking/decorating magazine, and a line of baking mixes and seasonings, including “Paula’s Butt Massage,” a rub for pork. Ms. Deen’s lasciviousness is one of her trademarks, but as she is also round enough to be relatable, and gray enough to draw loyal older viewers, it is more theatrical than threatening.

Even by the high standards of cable television — home of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” — Paula Deen has become an unusually extroverted woman. Rachael Ray, who is hardly known for hermit-like tendencies, conducted her 2005 wedding off-camera; not so Ms. Deen, who married for the second time in 2004 with a Food Network crew filming every moment from bridal shower to prenuptial spray tan. She has hauled her two sons, her brother, first and second husbands, various stepchildren, childhood friends and strangers into the glare with her: recent issues of her magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen, featured photographs of her newborn grandson, the powder room in her new house in Savannah, and even her 36-year-old son Bobby’s bedroom. “When I see something like that, it represents all those years of hard work that me and my mom and Jamie put into the business,” Mr. Deen said.

“I am as fascinated by the change in her as anybody,” he said. “We never talked about her agoraphobia, but we lived it for years.”

Image Spicy-sweet ham salad. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Some viewers are put off by her relentless self-exposure, Mediterranean-diet advocates might wince at her food’s saturated-fat content, and some Georgians are mortified by her exaggerated drawl.

But Ms. Deen has quickly developed an audience whose appetite for detail about her life seems bottomless. “I am Paula, and Paula is me, that’s about it,” said Mary Ellen McLeod, who lives outside Atlanta and posts frequently to Paula Deen fan Web sites. Ms. McLeod says that she loves Ms. Deen because “she’s not a size 2, she eats what she wants, and she put up with a lot of crap from men but still got that fairy tale ending.”

Indeed, Ms. Deen has now acquired many of the trappings of celebrity — including a personal assistant, a self-effacing second husband, a mink coat with her name embroidered in the lining and a rehearsed answer for almost every question — but she remains refreshingly unafraid to air out the uglier parts of her life. Most celebrity chefs stick to talking about food, preferably fond memories of mothers and grandmothers in the kitchen. But in addition to speaking out about her agoraphobia, Ms. Deen spikes her new memoir with unhappy moments of racism, infidelity, maternal rage — and even smoking. (Despite constant efforts to quit, she still goes through a pack a week.)