Irma Raumbauer was born Irma Starkloff in St.

Louis in 1877.

She came from this wealthy, upper middle class family and grew up going to all sorts of civic parties.

social organizations around town.

That's Andrew Wonko, a public historian at the Missouri Historical Society.

But all of a sudden, in 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression, her husband, Edgar, died by suicide.

He had come into a lot of financial difficulty.

He struggled with a lot of mental health problems throughout his life.

Irma didn't work and was faced with having to raise two kids on her own.

She had just $6,000 left to her name.

It was in that very low moment when she didn't really seem to know what to do next that she made an announcement that surprised everyone.

She was going to write a cookbook.

She was in her early 50s.

She was recently widowed and she didn't have much in the way of marketable skills.

And she was always willing to take a chance.

Ethan Becker is Irma Rombauer's grandson and a co-author of later editions of The Joy of Cooking.

He's currently living in Montana.

She was not terribly well known as a cook.

She was extremely well known as a hostess.

And when she decided to write the cookbook, one of the relatives said, "But Irma, if you wrote a cookbook, who would read it?"

As it turns out, a lot of people would.

Her books contained everything from light lunches to elaborate dinners and even what to do with leftovers.

She wanted to create a cookbook that spoke to people who just needed to get a hot meal on the table, but also encouraged them to have a little fun while they tried.

On the front cover, it had a picture of St.

Martha, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon.

And she encouraged people to just, you know, cinch up your apron and take a crack at it.

The first edition of the Joy of Cooking, she self-published 3,000 copies and she sold them for $2.75.

She mostly sold them to the wide circle of family and friends that she had here in town.

But this thing got around pretty quickly.

Irma's first edition provided easy, cost-effective recipes of all kinds to help families navigate the Great Depression.

Irma Rombauer knew the struggles people were facing, average people who were just trying to make meals for their family, and she approached them with a sense of respect and humor and joy.

And I think that's what made her cookbook so magical in the first place.

In 1936, Irma was able to find a national publisher.

All of a sudden, the joy of cooking exploded.

And her books also adapted over the years.

Her third edition was released in 1943 during World War II.

She added in wartime rationing recipes, so a whole bunch of recipes that had no meat at all.

Here's what to do with very limited amounts of sugar or salt or some of the other things that were rationed for daily consumption.

The book was practical, but many people also enjoyed Irma's humor.

Irma Rombauer's casual and fun style is definitely part of why this book became so popular.

But also her recipes are just plain good.

If you flip back through the book, even the earliest editions from the 1930s, there are recipes that have stood the test of time.

Now approaching a century old, they're still just as good as they ever were.

But as the book's popularity grew, Irma's health declined after a series of strokes.

Ethan's mother and Irma's daughter, Marion Rombauer, took over the joy of cooking in the '50s.

Marion added her own ideas to the book.

- She wanted to see the book as a reference book as well as a recipe book.

The book is worth the price strictly for the know-your-ingredients section.

- And she took up much of her mother's humor too in the 1975 edition.

She tells people in the opening that step number one is stand facing the stove.

So she has this wonderful kind of sense of humor that her mother has passed along down to her.

- Irma Rombauer passed away in 1962, but Marion led the Joy of Cooking through several more editions until it was time to pass the torch.

- When I was in my 20s, they came to me and said, "Are you interested in doing the book?"

Well, I like to eat, I like to cook.

I did a lot of recipe testing, and I did some of the writing.

And then when my mom died, then I took over the book.

- Now, Ethan's son and daughter-in-law, John Becker and Megan Scott continue the family legacy.

- I like to say that the cookbook has fed now four generations of our family.

And John and Megan are just doing a tremendous job.

I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have been given something which I kept alive and improved and found a way to make Irma's legacy increase greatly.

But one thing I realized early on is that no matter what I did to the book, no matter how great I made it, even if I made it 10 times as good, it was still Irma Rombauer's book.

Andrew Wonko says we can all learn from Irma's leap of faith.

She had no more knowledge than you or I do today about whether this was going to work, but she threw everything she had into it.

She threw herself into it.

She inhabited the pages of her book as much as any other serious author would.

You can find her sense of joy, her sense of humor in those pages.

Facing those sorts of really incredible circumstances, sometimes you just have to keep going and try your best.