Jeanna and John hiking with their dogs at Bernheim Forest on one of their rare days off
Louisville Scene:
JEANNA AND JOHN VARANESE
I
t’s no secret that horse people know hard work firsthand. Trainers don’t take holidays, they work day in and day out, regardless of the weather, putting in hours from sun-up to sunset, and vacations are a rarity.
By Deveau Zubrod Kreitzer
it clearly, and throughout her early years, he taught her how to properly groom a horse, along with general safety, and encouraged her to get riding lessons.
Jeanna kept begging her parents for those lessons, and her mom, Anne, finally got her in a program once she was nineyears-old. Her family had recently moved to Lexington, Kentucky for her father’s job, and so she began riding at George Knight’s barn. She was hooked from the first ride. John can appreciate the ideology that hard work is the Her family lived in Lexington for three years and then moved driving force behind success, as he is the head of not one, to Louisville in 1994, where they stayed until 1998, when she but three Louisville restaurants; his namesake, Varanese, and was a freshman in high school. While in Louisville, Jeanna got his newest endeavors, River House Restaurant and Raw Bar more heavily involved with her riding and rode under the and The Levee at the River House. Working hard is almost direction of Ava Whitmore at Rock Creek Riding Club. She an understatement to the man who routinely works 16 hour showed in academy and performance as a teen before moving days, and 80+ hour weeks don’t even make him flinch. to Jackson, Mississippi, where she continued taking lessons in nearby Folsom, Louisiana. A year later another move took Jeanna grew up with horses in her blood. Her grandfather the Calabrese family to Baltimore where Jeanna finished high helped exercise racehorses at The Meadowlands racetrack in school and earned a Bachelor’s Degree. Growing up, Jeanna New Jersey, and for her second birthday he brought a pony wasn’t able to have her own horse, but she always dreamed to her house nearby and gave pony rides. Jeanna remembers that one day she would. While not a horse person himself, the work ethic is something restauranteur John Varanese, and his Saddlebred exhibitor wife, Jeanna (Calabrese) are very familiar with.
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