The Western Reserve School of Cooking was founded in 1971 as the “Zona Spray Cooking School,” after its founder Zona Spray (1939-). Zona Spray was born in 1939 in Alaska, and later moved with her family to Oregon. She received a degree in sociology from the University of Oregon, where she met her husband Lee Spray. Lee and Zona moved to Louisiana where Zona befriended her neighbor Katie Buelle, a well-known Creole cook, who inspired her interest in cooking. The family eventually moved to Chicago, where Zona graduated from the Antoinette Pope Cooking School and apprenticed at the Dumas Pere l’Ecole de la Cuisine Francaise in Chicago under master chef John Snowden.

The Spray family settled in Kent, Ohio, where her husband took a teaching position. Spray taught early cooking courses in her home. In 1971, she rented space in Hudson’s Little Church on the Green, offering hands-on and technique-based courses. The school’s reputation increased enough for her to establish a permanent location.

In 1973, she purchased The Cookery, a cookware gift shop located at 140 Main Street in Hudson, where she set up a kitchen in the back room. Spray regularly brought in visiting chefs from all over the country to teach including Jacques Pepin, Madeleine Kamman, Nick Malgieri, Alice Medrich, John Ash, Hugh Carpenter, Alton Brown, and Michael Symon.

After opening up her cooking school, she would continue to travel and study, once studying at the Ecole de Cuisine LaVarenne in Burgundy, France. In 1997, she sold the school to Carole Ferguson, Akron native and graduate of the Zona Spray Cooking School. During Ferguson's tenure, the school was renamed the Western Reserve School of Cooking.

Ferguson ran the school for 7 years before financial difficulties necessitated selling it to Ed Schiciano, her accountant, who had helped her broker the original purchase. Schiciano ran the school for 3 years and considered closing the school when Catherine St. John took over the business.

St. John trained at the Tante Marie Cooking School in San Francisco and was an instructor at the Zona Spray Cooking School. St. John ran the school until 2020, when the pandemic-induced financial crisis forced her to close the school permanently.

This information from: Famous Chefs & Fabulous Recipes: Lessons Learned at One of the Oldest Cooking Schools in America.