The influencer from Anne Burrell’s final Instagram post has spoken out following the Food Network star’s shocking death at 55.
Elizabeth Eaton Rosenthal, who is famously known around New York City as the Green Lady of Brooklyn, has opened up about what it was like running into Burrell just days before her passing on June 17.
“I don’t know her. I meet a lot of people,” Rosenthal, 84, told Daily Mail on Monday, June 23. “But I am the last photo on her Instagram.”
“She [tagged] the photo of me and her to my Instagram, so then I got all the messages,” she continued. “I know she has passed. I posted a message afterwards for her family on Instagram.”
Although Rosenthal would not reveal what she and the cooking icon talked about during their run-in, she did say that Burrell was “very happy” during the chance encounter.
“She said she had been wanting to meet me for so long, and she finally did, so she was very happy,” the Green Lady of Brooklyn concluded.
On June 12, just five days before Burrell’s sudden death, the “Worst Cooks in America” host shared a sweet picture of her and Rosenthal on Instagram.
“I ran into [the Green Lady of Brooklyn] in my neighborhood today!” the chef wrote alongside the picture of her and the popular NYC fixture. “I’m not going to lie — I have been keeping an eye out for her.”
“I may or may not have followed her down the street for a minute,” Burrell added in her last-ever Instagram post. “She is just lovely!!!”
Rosenthal, who earned her Green Lady nickname because she has only worn the color green for over 20 years, later responded to say that it “was so much fun meeting” Burrell.
“It was so much fun meeting you 💚 see you again soon in the neighborhood 💚 the only thing I make is coffee and fig preserves from my fig tree 💚 love and hugs,” Rosenthal wrote.
She also invited the Food Network host over to her garden to pick figs.
“I would like to invite you to my garden and pick figs when they are ready, usually beginning to ripen beginning September, and come and visit the garden on a sunny day anyway,” she said.
Rosenthal returned to Burrell’s Instagram page once more on Tuesday, June 17, following the tragic news of the celebrity chef’s passing.
“Hi Anne,” she wrote, “you are such a lovely person just to meet and not knowing you, I just love you and so sorry but come to my garden and visit with all your beauty and love and I will be waiting for you.”
Burrell died on the morning of June 17 at her home in Brooklyn. She was reportedly found “unconscious and unresponsive” on the shower floor by her husband, Stuart Claxton, and pronounced dead at the scene.
While her cause of death has not yet been confirmed, a spokesperson for the New York City Fire Department said a 911 caller claimed Burrell suffered a “cardiac arrest.”
Meanwhile, a source told The Post that Burrell’s body was discovered next to dozens of pills. The New York Times later reported that the NYPD was investigating her death as a possible overdose.
The city Medical Examiner’s Office is reportedly conducting a toxicology screening to determine whether the pills played a part in her death.
Burrell’s loved ones, as well as more than 100 of her closest friends and colleagues, held a wake for her in NYC on June 20.
The Food Network has also announced that Burrell’s final season of “Worst Cooks in America,” titled “Worst Cooks in America: Talented and Terrible,” will premiere next month.
