Introducing Tough Cookie: The Wally “Famous” Amos Story

Bon Appétit

Food, Arts

4.2 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Meet Wally Amos. He founded the ubiquitous Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies in 1975, turning the brand into an overnight sensation and himself into a pop-culture fixture in the 1970s and 1980s.

But there’s a darker side to Wally’s seemingly sweet story. One filled with five marriages to six women and a string of bad business decisions that led him to lose the empire he had created.

When he passed away in 2024, host Sarah Amos set out to untangle her father’s complicated past and finally face the life and legacy she had been avoiding.

New episodes every Wednesday: swap.fm/l/vf-toughcookie-feed

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, Bate Clubbers, it is Jesse.
0:08.4	And Shilpa.
0:09.4	And we are here today to share with you an episode of a brand new show from Vanity Fair.
0:14.2	It's called Tough Cookie, the Wally Famous Story.
0:19.8	And like the name suggests, it's all about the truly wild life story of the founder of famous Amos cookies.
0:27.0	And to help set up what this show is all about, we are joined here by the host of the show and Wally's daughter, Sarah Amos.
0:35.2	Hi, Sarah.
0:35.9	Hi, guys.
0:36.8	Thanks for having me. Oh, my God. We are so excited to have you.
0:40.6	No, this is crazy that you are of the family. Yes, and that you work here. I am of the famous
0:46.8	Amos cookie family. We're not going to call it much of an empire because we don't own it. And as you
0:52.1	will find out in the podcast, it is a crazy story.
0:55.1	But I'm here. And because this is Bate Club, I did bring something.
0:59.9	I brought homemade, famous, famous, chocolate chip cookies for you guys.
1:05.3	Wait, his recipe?
1:06.5	Yes. His recipe.
1:08.2	Which, okay, here's, here's plot twist number one.
1:11.8	It is technically largely the recipe on the back of the Nestle Tull House bag of chocolate chips.
1:18.8	Okay.
1:19.3	But that being said, there are a couple of little twists to it that the family does,
1:23.0	and there's a very specific technique on how we make the cookies themselves, rolling it out.
1:28.9	Each cookie has its own unique shape.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bon Appétit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bon Appétit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.