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After months of high hopes and letdowns for the Washington Township couple, they decided to stop trying, and just relax.
But when 31-year-old Calcagni was abroad last September and one week into filming Gordon Ramsay cooking show "Next Level Chef," she noticed she was especially emotional, and her menstrual cycle was late.
Calcagni, an Oradell native, took two pregnancy tests. They were both positive.
"I was stunned," said Calcagni, who is competing in the Home Chef category of the show. "On the show, we’re in this wildly stressful situation and I was willingly putting myself there. But they tell you in beginning of a pregnancy to try to keep stress at bay, so that was something I wanted to know about so I could prepare myself mentally accordingly."
Calcagni told the show's crew, but kept her sweet surprise a secret from the cameras while filming through October 2022. She says, though, it made her experience all the more memorable.
Calcagni is due in May, and "Next Level Chef" will air right after Super Bowl LVII on Fox.
Calcagni has always enjoyed cooking for her friends and family, and her job as a marketing agent for Food & Wine Magazine lends itself well to that.
"Finding my place within the culinary worlds been difficult, which is why my job is a nice alignment," she said. "I knew I didn’t want to work in a restaurant or own a catering company, but I have always known I’ve wanted to do something that fed my passion for food, and what that looks like continues to evolve."
It was an Instagram account she launched in college that caught the eye of casting agents for "Next Level Chef," Calcagni said.
"I wasn't taking the account crazy seriously, it was just a platform to post photos of the food that I made for my husband, myself and family," she said.
An agent reached out to Calcagni last year and asked if she'd be interested in the show. They spoke on the phone, then Calcagni had an on-camera interview. A few months later, she was on a plane heading to filming abroad.
Chefs are divided into three categories: Home chefs, social media chefs, and professional chefs. Calcagni was grouped into the Home Chefs category, but all the chefs were competing against each other for every competition.
"The experience was unbelievable," she said. "It made me a better chef and I made a lot of really great friends in culinary industry."
Her experience was particularly unique, though, because of her pregnancy.
"We had been trying to get pregnant for more than a year," she explained. "We went to Italy for a friend’s wedding at the end of August and by then we weren't trying to get pregnant. There was no stress, we were drinking lots of wine and eating our faces off, and of course that's where we ended up conceiving."
Much to her own surprise.
Calcagni, normally calm under pressure, felt a lot unlike herself while filming. At first she chalked it up to the stress of the show and being away from her family. But when she found out she was going to have a baby, it all made sense.
"I like to think she gave me the energy I had to compete," Calcagni said. "It was more motivation for me once I found out."
Tune into FOX after the Super Bowl to watch Calcagni on "Next Level Chef" Season 2.
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