HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Navigating grocery store aisles is a piece of cake for this mom and wife from Henrico. Keya Wingfield’s love for food began thousands of miles away, in Bombay, India, where life revolved around family meals.
“You basically eat throughout the day. Before you eat breakfast, you're thinking about dinner. That's the culture, if you will.” said Keya.
Two decades ago her love for food traveled eight thousand miles following her heart.
Keya told CBS 6 anchor GeNienne Samuels, “We met through work, and just kind of knew he was my person. And that brought me to Richmond, Virginia, from Bombay Street. That was a direct flight. And I've been here ever since.”
When Keya moved to Richmond to marry David Wingfield, her life was still full of flavor but short on fitness.
“Sure, in Bombay, you walk a lot everywhere because it's the city, but there wasn't a lot of emphasis or focus on going to the gym or lifting weights. I had never even heard of lifting I'm not getting weights in my life. So that was the one piece that was missing.”
“I was very overweight as a child. I grew up that way as a teenager. And it's just something that I could never shake, no matter what diet I tried, no matter what I did with my health," Keya said.
As an adult, she tried to make a shift.
“I want to do something about my health," she said. "I want to be able to move better and not feel lethargic and weighed down. What should I do?”
The answer was on a flyer for the Monument Avenue 10K.
“I joined the YMCA training team because I was petrified," she recalled. "I didn't even know what a 10K was and what that meant. We would go for walks for training every Saturday morning, and that became ritualistic for me. I made some friends there. And the beauty of that was they were so welcoming of a beginner. I was a true beginner in every sense of the word. They didn't push me… It was very, very at my pace, very comfortable. So it put me on this path to understanding what I needed to do to get a better health. It took me very long to finish it, but I finished it. I felt like a superhero for the first time in my life because I was pushing myself past a boundary. I had never been this active person.”
And with this, came even more wins & discoveries in the United States. Keya stumbled upon a sweet treat.
“In India, baking was not a part of the culture. I had never even seen an oven until I moved here. But I started to learn how to bake in my husband's apartment. He had an oven there, which I thought was a storage box because he had cereal boxes sitting in there. So, I didn't know how to use one, I don't know how to operate one. I didn't know what it looked like. So I literally learned from scratch.”
In 2010, the self-taught baker quickly stirred up the sweet taste of success across Central Virginia.
“We [Candy Valley Cake Company] had plenty of work. We worked for every company in this town, and then some.”
Then in 2020, Hollywood came calling. The pastry chef’s treats satisfied Food Network’s sweet tooth on “Spring Baking Championship.”
She beat out 10 other pastry chefs when she was four months pregnant with her second child.
But going up against the best of the best bakers couldn’t prepare her for what came a few months later.
“My son was born in 2021, and then he passed away in March of 2021. He was two months old. After I lost him, I was in the worst shape of my life. I had horrible diabetes. I could not shake anything," Keya said. “I realized that I still have a daughter to take care of. It was my responsibility to be a better mother for her. And it's not fair that she gets a broken version of me, and that changed everything. “
Keya turned back to something that gave her undeniable strength a decade earlier.
“I walked another 10K, this time with a very different mindset. I slapped on a sign on my back that said, doing it for myself because as moms, we're so giving, and we always do for the kids and always for the family, but we forget to fill our own cup. So I had to remind myself that I could do it for myself first, and only then can I be of help, only then can I be there for my daughter," she said.
This was another winning recipe.
“I'm down 85 pounds now, which in my life, I have never lost that much weight. I would always lose 10 pounds and gain 20. It was always that cycle. All of my diabetes is completely reversed. I'm not on any medication whatsoever, and I make movement a priority in my life above everything else.”
Inspired by her own health journey and her husband’s love for potato chips, Keya launched a line of clean, flavorful Indian-spiced chips now sold in 80 stores across the nation.
GeNienne and Keya found both flavors of chips on aisle eight at Good Foods Grocery in Richmond.
GeNienne asked, “How does it feel to see your potato chips here?”
"You have to pinch me because these are some pretty big brands. So for little ol’ me to have my chips and have these many facings in this aisle, is surreal.” said Keya.
The border down the center of the back of each potato chip bag represents the border from Keya’s mom's sari. The hand holding the chip is her daughter’s.
Keya points at “Daksh Foods Inc. and says, “There's my son's name. The company is built in his name. So every bag we sell is me spreading his pixie dust a little bit in this world.”
“This is the purest form of spice from my motherland that you will ever have. And then it's an American potato. It's my Indian-American dream.”
Keya has shown us life is indeed a marathon, with unexpected ingredients. And no matter where you start, a dash of courage and a sprinkle of persistence can take you across any finish line.
Her advice to us all is simple.
“You don't have to feel stuck," she said. You don't have to feel alone. You can do different things. You can do brave things. You can have courage. All that is within reach.”
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