Their journey began when Tom cultivated his cooking ability. He was 22 and took a job in Chicago. Tom did not know anyone in the area and wanted a hobby to pass the time, so he started learning how to cook. 

A few months later, Rachael and Tom met and immediately clicked during their first date in 2013. 

Shortly after Rachael and Tom’s engagement in 2016, the couple decided that they were going to partake in the Whole30 diet to get ready for their wedding. The program instructed them to remove dairy and gluten products from their plate, and Tom was able to challenge himself in the kitchen.

In September of 2020, Rachael was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome.*  The Sullivans wanted to have a child, but recognized that Rachael’s PCOS was preventing her from getting pregnant. After lots of research, they turned to holistic medicine through food. Tom worked diligently to make meals around different phases of Rachael’s menstrual cycle and incorporated more fresh ingredients into their diet. 

“I feel like [cooking for her PCOS] taught me a lot,” Tom said. “It was very similar when we did Whole30 because I have to keep it real food and make things from scratch. I feel like it just challenged me to learn a lot more about food, which gets me excited.” Three months after changing her diet and exercising, Rachael’s menstrual cycle had stabilized to a 32-day cycle and fourteen months later, Rachael was pregnant.

In January of 2021, Tom made an Instagram account, @mealssheeats, to document all of the food he made for Rachael. The account was full of meals and recipes he made to help manage Rachael’s PCOS. A month later, Rachael discovered the account. While she was scrolling on Instagram, she found @mealssheeats in the Suggestions For You section (which gives a user recommendations of other accounts they may be interested in). After first being a little confused that someone had an account with the same name as her husband posting the same foods she ate that week, Rachael encouraged Tom to post more and even started helping him stage the pictures. 

On TikTok, she shared the story of Tom cooking for her PCOS and the @mealssheeats Instagram, and it went viral, gaining over four million views. Rachael was already an avid TikToker and her passion for making videos mirrored Tom’s passion for cooking. The couple enjoyed combining their talents as their social media following grew.

On Labor Day weekend her freshman year of college, Rachael called up some family friends in Raleigh and asked if she could spend the weekend with them. All of her roommates were going home for the long holiday and Rachael didn't want to spend it alone. She fostered a relationship with the family friends, spending multiple holidays with them and their neighbors, the Gallaghers. When she was at App State, Rachael fell in love with North Carolina and when Tom’s job had an opening, the pair jumped at the chance and moved to Raleigh from Chicago in late 2019. 

When Rachael and Tom relocated, they reconnected with the Gallaghers, who mentioned that their son, Kevin, was attending North Carolina State University. The Sullivans politely reached out to Kevin, but didn’t hear back.

Then, COVID-19 hit and NC State closed its dorms in the fall of 2020. Tom was at the local YMCA and ran into Kevin, who talked about the dining hall closing and the hunt for an apartment. Kevin briefly mentioned that he was getting serious about his health and fitness. Tom knew that microwave meals and pizzas — staples for college students — were not going to cut it and promised he would call Kevin and invite him over when he cooked extra food. 

Rachael uploaded the first video of Kevin coming over for food in April 2021 on TikTok. The couple ‘adopted’ him and dubbed him “College Kid Kevin.” Their first video got three million views. Every time he would come over, Rachael would take a short video of him with his food and post it on TikTok. The videos blew up on social media, one of their most popular videos with Kevin accumulated over 14.8 million views and 2 million likes.

To their surprise, the Sullivans got thousands of requests from other college students hoping to be adopted just like Kevin. 

“The college meals meant so much to me, especially during my freshman year when we were kicked off of campus for COVID-19,” Kevin said. “That was a weird time, and knowing there were people close by who I could go to to get a little taste of home made my week.”

When other college kids asked to be adopted, Rachael and Tom didn’t hesitate to say yes, and hosted their first college meal for other students in North Carolina three months after their first video with Kevin went viral. Since July 2021, Rachael and Tom have fed thousands of college students across North Carolina as their hobbies for cooking and making TikToks slowly turned into a full time job. 

Bethany Villanti went to a meal in 2021. “Honestly, I'm so glad they do this because going to their place is like going home without actually going home,” she said. “Actually, the food is way better at Tom and Rachael’s.”

Catie Mynster attended her first meal in 2022. She said that she could feel the love the Sullivans have for cooking and for others through the way they made sure each student left their house smiling. 

“They both just really got to know you. Like, they took the time to learn your name and where you went to school and listened to you,” she said. “Not many adults — or people, for that matter — would do this and it really shows, like, what kind of people they are.”

The Sullivans have over 1,400 students on their invite list and roughly 10% of the students on the list attend each meal. 

Along with making meals for hundreds of college kids every month, Rachael and Tom embarked on the tedious journey of writing two cookbooks: Meals She Eats: Empowering Advice, Relatable Stories, and Over 25 Recipes to Take Control of Your PCOS (which became a New York Times bestseller) and Honey, What Do We Got?: A Week-by-Week Pregnancy Cookbook. Tom will also be putting his cooking skills to the ultimate test on Food Network's new competition series, 100 Chefs (premiering June 2026).

“Hell no, I never imagined this would grow anywhere close to the level it is now,” Kevin said. “I was just hungry and wanted to get some free food.”

“Everyone's got a story and when students come through, we've learned through DMs and private messages and private things they've shared that there are a hundred reasons why they come,” Tom said. “Everyone's in a place and everyone's got their story. And it's just, you know, food is great, and that's like our way to bring people together, but you never know what the reason is.”

The meals take a whole week to plan, buy, and cook. Rachael and Tom take the industrial pots and pans out of the shed and make every condiment from scratch. They have received monetary support from brands looking to support a meal, and some companies send free goodies to give away at meals. Even though preparing for the meals is time-consuming, the Sullivans would not trade it for the world. 

“That's what all this really was. It was like an outlet for me to be like, ‘Oh, we're, you know, we have this one person. We're cooking for him. And now it's 20. It's 100.’ And I feel like it's just, like, been a fun way to document the whole experience,” Rachael said. “Did I think it would turn into what it did? Absolutely not.”

*PCOS was renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS) to emphasize the impact on the whole body, not just the ovaries. PMOS is a hormone disorder found in women, sometimes resulting in missed periods and lack of ovulation.