Allysa Torey grew up in a hotel in the Catskills, where she started singing at an early age and developed her love of horses and the outdoors. She spent much of her childhood baking and cooking for her family. Her life-long passion for the slower, pre-high-tech age of the post-World War II era led her to form and front the Alyssa Torey Swing Band, as well as the now world-famous Magnolia Bakery on the corner of Bleecker and 11th in Greenwich Village. She divides her time between her white farmhouse in Sullivan County and New York City. She does not own a computer.