NORWALK, CONNECTICUT — Pulling into the driveway of Barbara Costello’s “Basket House” felt like the start of a Food Network episode. Her quaint, pale-green cottage, with a pastel-yellow Dutch front door, stood out from the rest of the staid white homes in her neighborhood, reflecting her genial charm. It’s tucked away on a silent street, right next to the Silvermine River, and it quickly became clear that Costello puts her tasteful homemaking advice to good use.
The 78-year-old, known online as @BrunchWithBabs, has built a following of over eight million people across TikTok and Instagram, sharing the recipes, traditions and advice she gathered over the years while raising four kids and nine grandchildren — all of which can be found in her latest
book, her fourth, titled “Homemaking With Babs.” It’s aNew York Times best-selling guide filled with tips and tricks to help keep a home running smoothly without getting overwhelmed, and it's organized by season.
Costello is a rarity on TikTok — she's one of the few older people on the platform, yet she has a clear grasp on what viewers want. It doesn't feel forced – she doesn't try to hang with the young kids. "One thing that I've learned about this whole social media experience is that you're never too old," she told USA TODAY.
It'd be easy to draw comparisons to other homemaking legends — she has Martha Stewart's encyclopedic knowledge to display and Ina Garten's radiant glow. But her predecessors became household names through television. Costello carved her own path online by understanding the language of social media and meeting new audiences where they are.
“You have always got something to share," she said. "There's always something out there that you might think ‘oh everybody knows how to do that,’ whether it's making a bed, doing laundry, or cleaning a dishwasher filter. No, they don’t, and that’s what’s been so amazing to me is that I've been able to share things that people really want and have never heard, and so no one should ever feel that they're aged out.”
Fans have fallen in love with the inviting smile that’s always spread across her face as she shares a piece of her grandmotherly knowledge. A video of hers might reveal what she made for an annual neighborhood Halloween party, or hacks for taking hot dishes to the beach or tips for dealing with seasonal allergies. A large part of her success is understanding the right filming methods for virality: a captivating personality, a concise explanation of the topic in an engaging voiceover and camera angles that let viewers see her and the food.
She credits her meteoric rise to being on the right social media platform at the right time, as she began creating content during the COVID-19 lockdown. "You would think that because I'm old people would just go, 'Eh, scroll,' and move on," she said. "But I think that, especially when we went through COVID, people were separated from family and that made people even more attracted to a grandmother figure."
After we met at the front door, she chatted in the living room with her daughter, Elizabeth Ariola, who also serves as her manager and whom she affectionately refers to as her daught-ager. They settled a debate about whether she should wear the powder-blue cardigan with a brown-and-white scarf tied around her neck – they nixed the scarf and changed the sweater to one that was a pastel blue.
The house nods to the basket shop it was in the 18th century, with its barrage of baskets hung from the ceiling in the family room. It underwent many transformations before it landed at Costello’s feet, and she saw its potential. She and her husband renovated the space, turned it into the perfect backdrop for her increasingly popular social media content.
We stepped out onto the patio right next to the river and took a seat on pastel-green metal furniture, with a breezy, calm fall afternoon serving as the backdrop for our interview. And as she settled in, you could see her turn "it" on. She knew the camera was on her. The intonation of her speech shifted to a mixture of infomercial announcer and food talk show host; it fluttered up and down while she made eye contact and occasionally repeated my name. I felt like I was watching one of the videos that have made her millions of fans fall in love with her.
Before finding an online audience, she was a retired preschool teacher who was helping her children with their kids. She didn’t have any social media. “I was doing email, and that was just fine,” Costello joked. “In many ways, I was reborn when I made my first TikTok.”
Ariola, her youngest daughter of four, suggested she share her talents with the world. “My grandkids were on TikTok, and they were probably middle schoolers, and they would sometimes encourage me to dance with them,” Costello said. “That's what I thought TikTok was about, until my daughter encouraged me to make a TikTok. But not about dancing; it was about sharing recipes.”
The two started making videos after she moved in with her daughter for a few weeks to help her around the house. Shortly after they posted the first video, Ariola asked her if she wanted to read the comments, so she agreed and was surprised to have been met with dozens of heartfelt replies to her videos, with people saying that she reminded them of their mom or grandma, or things like “It feels like you’re speaking directly to me.”
"I've always been in awe of my mother's seemingly endless energy and ability to problem-solve just about anything, including dinner," Ariola shared via email. "At the time, cooking videos were beginning to gain traction on TikTok and I just knew her personality and approachable recipes would resonate with a lot of people."
Costello's daughter says she was used to families from their tight-knit community stopping by her mother because she was a beloved preschool teacher. "Her reach online just feels like a really beautiful extension of that," Ariola wrote. "Knowing that her recipes and holiday touches are being used all over the world makes them feel even more special when we experience them at home."
In the digital media landscape, even more than in Hollywood, younger creators are favored over older ones. Though, in Costello’s corner of the internet, that is not an issue. “I don't get a lot of negativity online,” she said. “But if I do, I have like a whole brigade of people who go to Babs's defense. They’ll be like ‘Lay off! Babs is a national treasure. Babs for president.’ I got my people."
And that’s who she wants to focus on when creating her content: the people who find value in it. Many of her hacks and traditions come from her grandmother, an Italian immigrant. She spent extra time with her while her husband was in basic training for the National Guard. "My grandmother could do more things with baking soda than you could count. She was an amazing gardener and cook," she said, before explaining the importance of passing down these traditions.
"Everybody has roots," the TikTok star said. "Let's face it, after a couple of generations, nobody's going to remember any of us. We're here for a time, and I think you leave your mark as best you can, and your history is passed down through passing down tradition."
Is there anything left that she'd like to do? Before the question was finished, she immediately responded, "No," with a hearty laugh and added, "I've got four books, and that's a lot for someone who wasn't even on social media six years ago."
She still wants to share her home hacks with her audience and dispel misconceptions. "Let go of perfection," Costello said. "What's good for you might not be perfect for somebody else. It's better to have a happy home than a perfect home."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Brunch With Babs defied the TikTok odds and built a following of millions
