Lovina Zook Left The Amish And Now Shares Her Recipes With 6 Million Followers — Without Breaking Eye Contact

Lovina Zook in a green Amish dress and white covering, looking directly at the camera while holding a hand-crank meat grinder — Amish-raised Lovina Zook, 23, in one of her cooking videos. Image: Lovina Zook/YT

Amish born-and-raised Lovina Hershberger Zook has been getting a lot of media attention beyond her own success online. And for good reason – she now has around six million followers across social media, where she posts Amish recipes and stories about the culture she left.

That culture is a conservative Amish community – to my eye and ear she seems she is likely from a Swartzentruber Amish background (confirmed below) – about as plain and disconnected from tech as it gets.

Which I bet is another ingredient to her success. Lovina’s presence in her videos – her especially plain Amish clothing, heavy Amishy accent, and stories from her background make her stand out even more than some other Amish from more “assimilated” groups, so to speak.

Her latest big media coverage is a CBS Sunday Morning profile out over the weekend.

How & Why She Left The Amish

Zook is 23, and left the Amish five years ago (a story we’ve seen before). She grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch in what CBS describes as one of the most conservative Amish subgroups, one of 13 children. Her older brother left before her. After finishing eighth grade she became a schoolteacher.

As a teacher, she told CBS she was paid $12 a day – which also sounds about like Swartzentruber-level wages – and drove eight miles daily by horse-and-buggy.

This level of earning, unfortunately, did not even cover the wear-and-tear on the horse and buggy. Her father told her she would have to change careers and work at the sawmill.

If that surprises you, well some Amish females do take on what some might think of as more traditionally “male” jobs – other examples would be work in the RV factories in northern Indiana, and furniture assembly and finishing.

“I loved being a schoolteacher. That was the best part of my life at that time,” Lovina told CBS. This seems to have been one motivating factor to leave the Amish. But the thing that pushed her to do it came later:

The last straw for Zook came when her mother criticized how she dressed for church.

“She’s like, ‘You’re gonna have to use a smaller band around your neck because people are gonna start talking.’ And in that moment – I didn’t say a word, but I was like, I’m so tired of people telling me what to do. And I’m always trying to be perfect. And it is never right. And I was just done. And I was like, okay, this is the moment I start planning.”

She planned for two weeks and left at night while her family slept. It took some thinking through:

“I was like, I have to time this so they’re sleeping, like, really deeply when I leave, ’cause the stairs creaked a little, and I had to, like, figure out which stairs creaked,” she said.

“And the day before, I sneakily oiled all the door hinges so they don’t squeak when you open and close them.”

After leaving, she ended up living with her brother and learning “English ways.” She got married to a former Amish man named Eli, and now makes a living online. One source of income is a self-published cookbook.

Even though she didn’t enjoy a lot of Amish lifestyle rules, she says she still respects a lot of Amish ways, and misses her family. As the second-oldest, she was called “Momma #2” by her younger siblings.

She might also still miss teaching, but on the bright side, I’m pretty sure she’s doing much, much better than $12/day at her current levels of reach online.

What She Cooks

Zook’s largest audience came from a tutorial on how Amish women do their hair, which CBS reports has passed 50 million views on TikTok. Here is the same video on YouTube:

Her food posts range from traditional dishes to ones that surprise non-Amish viewers.

Among them is what she calls an Amish cheeseburger – buttered homemade bread layered with cheese and grilled in a cast-iron pan. Sounds like what most people call a grilled cheese. She told CBS she has never eaten a grilled cheese, only an Amish cheeseburger.

She also makes coffee soup, using hot milk, instant coffee, sugar and saltine crackers, which she says she prefers with cottage cheese and meat. I wonder if her recipe beats Amish bread soup? I think I’d rather keep my coffee in the mug and soup in the bowl, but to each his/her own.

The Eye Contact Thing

One odd thing that immediately hits you as you watch her videos – more than her charming Swartzy accent and plain Amish look – is her stare.

She’s locked into the camera, rarely even looking down at what her hands are doing. If I didn’t know better, I might think she was an A.I. creation – like “Melanskia” or any of a number of A.I.-created Amish figures online.

But watch long enough and that doesn’t hold up. See what I mean in this video, from early on in her channel:

That, like presumably a lot of her videos, involved cutting with a sharp knife, so I’m glad that yes, she is occasionally checking what her hands are doing.

Enough people have noticed that Lovina has leaned into it.

In February 2025 she posted a TikTok clip captioned only with an eyes emoji, set to audio about having the “world’s most lethal eye contact;” it got 349,000 likes and nearly 19,000 comments. In May 2025 she posted another, with the text: “Propaganda I’m not falling for: It’s ok to look away from the camera.”

She also addressed the idea that she is “fake” directly in this video on YouTube, where she briefly tells her story and shows you a bit of her home.

Religion News Service, in a June profile, noted that her audience comments on her cooking methods, her attitude, her accent – and her direct eye contact with the camera.

That profile also confirms she comes from a Swartzentruber community – out of Iowa. It also notes that Lovina was never baptized into the church, which (in theory at least) means she is not subject to church discipline.

One thing is for sure, Lovina isn’t shy in front of the camera, has a natural charisma, and is clearly having a lot of fun (for what it’s worth, we’ve seen that to be a winning formula before). I can’t attest to her recipes, but that alone will keep people watching.

Where She Is Now

Lovina drives a car now, and sells her self-published cookbook through her site. She and her husband Eli live in Texas, and are expecting their first child next month. She told CBS she now believes she is living the life God wants for her, rather than the one she was warned would send her to Hell.

She added that she would like a house, a garden, a farm, and eventually an Amish restaurant and market. CBS also published a separate Amish peanut butter pie recipe from Zook alongside the profile. Good for Lovina, and I expect she’ll have continued and growing success.