By the time I hit my mid-20s, I had sadly held a front-row seat to my dad Wally “Famous” Amos’s slow decline, from “cover of magazine” famous to “pop-culture trivia answer” famous, for many years. After leaving Famous Amos, Wally started a string of new cookie companies—none of which came close to capturing the success his first venture achieved. A lawsuit with Famous Amos over the use of his name left him in a financial hole, and he would spend the rest of his life never quite climbing out of it.
By the 2010s, my relationship with my dad had become one of performative love. I watched as he continued to court fame, including during an appearance on Shark Tank in 2016, but chose not to get involved in any of his business dealings. We chatted and saw each other regularly, but his divorce from my mom, Christine, as well as two subsequently short-lived marriages, had created a distance that neither he nor I seemed to want to really fix.
Then, in 2019, Wally put into motion a series of events that would set up a final chapter of his life filled with chaos for me and my brothers, Michael, Gregory, and Shawn. As we navigated issues tied to his dementia, abrupt cross-country moves, family court battles, and his eventual passing in 2024, I was finally forced to face my father’s life and legacy head-on.
As my time making this podcast comes to an end, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that I’ll never really know how my dad would have felt about my telling his story. Would he have understood and appreciated my decision to so publicly air the journey I went on to understand who Wally Amos was to the world—and, more importantly, to me? In the end, I’ve decided he would have been proud. He was a man who was always happiest when his successes—and mistakes—could help inspire others. It would have brought a smile to his face to know that, in the end, he did exactly that for his daughter.
To hear the final two episodes of Tough Cookie: The Wally “Famous” Amos Story, listen here or wherever you download your podcasts.
