By Ben Nsemo
Lynja, born Lynn Yamada Davis on July 31, 1956, and died on January 1, 2024, was an American celebrity chef who was best known for her viral TikTok videos.
Personal Life
Lynja lived in Holmdel, New Jersey. She married Hank Steinberg and had a daughter, Becky. They divorced and she then married Keith Davis. They had three children, Shofet, Sean Davis, a professional soccer player, and Tim.
Illness and Death
In 2019, Lynja was diagnosed with throat cancer, which caused her voice to change. In 2021, she was also diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She died at Riverview Medical Center on January 1, 2024, at the age of 67 from complications of esophageal cancer. Her death was announced on social media on January 12, 2024, by her son in a post in which he shared photos and memories of her life.
Early Life and Education
Lynn Yamada was born in New York City on July 31, 1956, to Mabel Fujisake and Tadao Yamada. She was a third-generation Japanese-American. She spent much of her youth in Fort Lee, New Jersey, attending Fort Lee High School.
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She attended MIT, earning a degree in civil engineering in 1977. During her time at MIT, she was the chairwoman for The Tech student newspaper. She was employed by the government and worked to ensure the accessibility of federal buildings. She went on to earn degrees in Public Health and Business Administration from Columbia Business School.
Lynja worked at AT&T Labs for 29 years as a project manager and systems engineer.
Lynja TikTok Career
Davis began creating videos for TikTok in 2020 when she was 63. The idea for the videos came from her youngest son, Tim Davis, who was honing his video editing skills, while they were in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. He helped shoot and edit each of her “Cooking with Lynja” videos since 2020. In 2022, “Cooking with Lynja” won “Best Food” and “Best Editing” at the 12th Streamy Awards.
She frequently collaborated with Nick DiGiovanni, including a video in November 2021 where they broke the Guinness World Record for the largest-ever cake pop, which weighed 97 pounds 8.52 ounces (44.240 kg). She broke several other records with DiGiovanni, including the world’s largest chicken nugget, which weighed 20.96 kg (46.2 lb), and the world’s largest sushi roll, which measured 2.15 metres (7 ft 1 in) in diameter. She was named to Forbes’s “50 Over 50” list in 2023. Her fans are called “Lynja-turtles”.
