The City Girl Meets the Marlboro Man

If you're not familiar with Ree Drummond, she was a city girl until she was whisked off her feet by the Marlboro Man in a Bartlesville, Oklahoma, bar when she was visiting her parents one Christmas before moving from Los Angeles to Chicago; she is now a stay-at-home homeschooling mother of four who lives on a cattle ranch in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Drummond started a home & hearth blog in 2006 called The Pioneer Woman (10 million hits a month!) that highlights recipes, housekeeping tips, girl talk, and a little bit of everything else. (Sites have popped up over the years accusing Drummond of being a phony, but raspberries to them. Jealousy is so unbecoming.)

The step-by-step photo recipes on her blog were so popular, she compiled them in a cookbook and published The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl in 2009. She's been entertaining devoted fans with tidbits about her romance with the Marlboro Man and her life on the ranch for years, but now their story can be read in her new book, The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tar Wheels—A Love Story (release date February 1). She says the Marlboro Man rarely reads her blog, just enough to point out mistakes she's made about farming techniques.

Oh, and Ree Drummond's life is being written into a movie for Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon in a romantic comedy? Sweet Home Oklahoma, maybe? Water for Horses? Should be interesting.