Sue Zelickson, a renowned trailblazer for women chefs and champion of the Twin Cities food and restaurant scene, has died.

She was 91.

A Friday article in Minnesota Monthly said her family reported that Zelickson died peacefully at home. She was a columnist for the magazine for more than a decade.

The Minnesota Broadcast Hall of Famer, James Beard Award winner in food reporting and co-founder of the Charlie Awards said in a 2014 Pioneer Press article that her proudest accomplishment was founding Women Who Really Cook — a networking organization that gives out scholarships to women to go to culinary school.

In the article, she said that the idea to found Women Who Really Cook came when she went to Lakeside Lucy’s, “a little muffin shop on Excelsior Boulevard; it was a drive-through.”

The owner, Lucy Gore, asked Zelickson, “How do women in this industry meet other women?”

“That’s how it started,” Zelickson said. “I invited everyone I knew in the industry. There must have been 30 to 40 women at our first meeting. There were a couple of young girls who were just about to open a restaurant and another few that had been through it. The experienced ones told the young ones what to expect, and I just remember their eyes being like saucers. People shared everything, and they still do, 20 years later.”

In mentioning her most proud accomplishments, Zelickson also included starting Kids Cafe at Perspectives in St. Louis Park.

“It’s a program that teaches kids to cook and eat good things. They learn about different foods and healthy foods. We feed 50 to 60 kids a night. We do a big Thanksgiving dinner, too. They do homework after school there and they cook,” she said at the time.

Zelickson was a co-founder of the Charlie Awards that honor local chefs.

“It started after I walked out of my third or fourth Ivey Awards (local awards for theater) ceremony, and I thought, why shouldn’t we celebrate chefs the same way?” she told the Pioneer Press in a 2015 article. “They’re always giving their time and talent to so many causes. This is a way we can honor them, and they don’t have to cook. Culinary students from four local culinary schools do all the cooking for the event, and they are so excited to cook for these big-name chefs. The chefs are just as much local celebrities as those theater actors and actresses.”

In 2019, she received the organization’s annual lifetime achievement award.

In a Facebook post on Friday, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Zelickson “was always EVERYWHERE moved fast! But I most remember her love for new chefs and new ideas and young people pursuing their dreams. Thinking of her family today and her forever smile.”

When she was young, Zelickson said she’d wanted to be a model but was too short. She said that while everybody knew she only needs three to four hours a sleep a night, not many people knew that she loves country music and had been to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and also loved jazz, she told the Pioneer Press in 2014.

Her first food memory was working in her dad’s drugstore near Minnehaha Parkway and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis.

“I had to take two streetcars to get there,” she said. “A cherry phosphate is probably my first food memory.”

Her involvement in the Twin Cities culinary scene was a happy fluke, Zelickson said.

She was volunteering for a lot of nonprofit organizations and ended up involved with the food part of it, she said.

“I edited a lot of cookbooks to raise money for places like the Guthrie (Theater in Minneapolis) and the governor’s mansion. Through that, things just happened. I started doing things on the radio. Someone liked my voice and said, ‘Do you want to be on the radio?’ So I have been on WCCO radio since the ’80s. I did cable TV and regular TV for a while, too. My former radio show, ‘Food for Thought,’ won a James Beard award. I mean, I even sold Bushel Boy tomatoes at grocery stores. I taught people not to put their tomatoes in the refrigerator,” she said in the article.

Zelickson was a “giant in the food and philanthropy scene here in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which is really saying something considering she was only 4’7″ tall,” WCCO radio host Jason DeRusha wrote in the Minnesota Monthly article. “If there was a restaurant opening: she was there. If there was a chance to raise money: she was leading the charge. She was a cheerleader as the founder of The Charlie Awards for chefs. She was an advocate for women getting their flowers in the culinary world as the founder of Women Who Really Cook.”