TikTok Star Cook
Chef Kevin Ashton records his internet cooking show using his phone placed atop stacked plastic bins, inside the kitchen of the Pi Beta Phi sorority house at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he works as a private chef
Kevin Ashton’s rise to internet fame started in The Biggest Little City.
In late 2023, Kevin Ashton traveled to rural Florida to visit his parents. While he was shopping for dinner in a local grocery store, the bagger recognized him from his TikTok cooking videos and excitedly told Ashton how much she loves his recipes.
“My mom was just absolutely blown away that this woman in the middle of Florida recognized me,” says Ashton, a 55-year-old social media sensation living in Reno who uses the handle Old’s Cool Kevmo. “I had a couple million followers — that’s thousands and thousands of followers per state. There are people all over, and they recognize me!”
Ashton creates simple yet delightful dishes for the University of Nevada, Reno’s Pi Beta Phi sorority. He works as its private chef in a small commercial kitchen, cooking 300 plates per week and 1,200 plates per month for members. He individually plates every single dish to include allergy and other preferences as needed for the sorority residents.
He places his phone inside stacked pans to record himself cooking, edits the video using VivaVideo, and then records a voiceover narrating the recipe. His straightforward videos stand out in a world flooded with complex production and AI-generated images.
And that’s why 6.6 million people follow him.
“Isn’t it crazy that he doesn’t even know I’m like his biggest fan?” says Rachel Ribeiro, a Tri Delta alumnus. “It’s been five years since I graduated, and every time a video from Kevin pops up on my For You page, I light up. It’s pretty cool to see someone out of The Biggest Little City make it as big and far as he has on social media. I also love the genuineness that comes from Kevin’s videos. You can tell he has so much love and passion for what he does.”
Just Being Himself
Ashton had wanted to become a famous TV chef for a long time. He started his first YouTube channel more than 10 years ago, but he always made an effort to look and sound sophisticated. When TikTok gained popularity during the pandemic, he decided to try something new.
“I was just cooking goofy food and having a real good time with it when people needed that comic relief,” he says. “I never thought I was much, just being myself. I thought I had to put on a show. That’s not true. No one wants to see a show.”
In September 2023, Ashton was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and was told he had a 30 percent chance of surviving. But after more than 20 immunotherapy infusions and radiation, he received the news that he was cancer free in mid-April.
“The funny thing is, I did everything wrong,” he says about his cancer diagnosis on TikTok. “I didn’t eat well; I didn’t exercise. The one thing I did and stayed true to the whole time was being positive.”
For Ashton, the secret ingredient all along, for both his videos and his health, was showing the world his authentic self.
“The power of positivity does wonders,” he says on TikTok.
Now that the school year has ended, Ashton is traveling around the country this summer, looking for new places in which to cook and fellow TikTokers with whom to collaborate.
“There’s a guy on TikTok who wants to come to Reno and bring another big creator who lives in the Midwest,” he says. “The three of us would blow minds if we showed up in the same video.”
Old’s Cool Kevmo Find Kevin Ashton by searching for Oldscoolkevmo on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
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