Lynn Yamada Davis, a TikTok creator who entertained millions of people with her quirky style and cooking tips on her Cooking With Lynja account, died on January 1 in Red Bank, New Jersey. She was 67 years old.
The cause of death, at Riverview Medical Center, was esophageal cancer, said his daughter Hannah Mariko Shofet. Mrs. Davis lived in Holmdel, New Jersey.
Ms. Davis began creating healthy Cooking With Lynja videos in 2020 with her youngest son, Tim Davis, to help maintain his filmmaking skills during the pandemic shutdown.
His social media accounts remained active after his death, because he had asked his son to post videos that had already been edited. One of those videos shows the two of them searching for truffles in Italy.
“My mom was like my partner in crime,” Davis, 27, who edited the TikTok account, said in a phone interview.
Another thing she asked, Davis said, was that he post some older videos they had made together about a decade ago.
Those early versions of what would later become an international TikTok sensation known for her playfulness were a way for Davis to learn how to prepare the food her mother cooked “as well as having a time capsule,” she said.
After the latest Cooking With Lynja videos are uploaded, he said, the account will stop posting.
Cooking With Lynja began in 2020 and gained a lot of attention with a video in which the five-foot-tall Ms. Davis makes a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich while showing off some extravagant dance moves. Soon, around a million people were following his unconventional content. (Today, the account has more than 17 million followers.) Potential sponsors noticed the success of the videos and began contacting her.
More than three years later, the Cooking With Lynja YouTube account has almost 10 million subscribers and Ms. Davis' Instagram account has more than two million followers.
In 2022, Forbes included Ms. Davis on its annual “50 Over 50” list, which honors successful women over 50. Her and Her won the Streamy Awards, which honor online videos, in the editing and food categories. In 2023 she attended the Forbes Women's Summit in Abu Dhabi, where she spoke on a panel.
Lynn Yamada was born on July 31, 1956 in New York City and lived most of her early life in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Her father, Tadao Yamada, was a businessman and her mother, Mabel Fujisake Yamada, ran the household.
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and earned a master's degree in business administration and public health from Columbia Business School.
Davis worked for Bell Labs (now AT&T Labs) and had a long career in telecommunications before her unexpected fame on TikTok, said Shofet, her daughter.
“She had this whole chapter as an innovative engineer and she was very proud of it,” she added.
As a TikTok star, Ms. Davis would become recognized around the world, including in Japan and Italy, where she traveled with her youngest son, Tim. Sean Davis, her other son, is a professional soccer player who used to be a midfielder for the New York Red Bulls and now plays for the Nashville Soccer Club.
“She was my first coach,” Sean Davis said. When she visited him in Nashville, she said, she was recognized on the street, often by young people who use TikTok a lot.
“That's how I realized how famous I was,” she said. “People asked for photographs and I took them.”
Above all, Cooking With Lynja provided a lot of fun for Ms. Davis, Tim Davis said. With special effects that have tiny versions of Mrs. Davis flying across the screen and words like “Lynja's got that drug!” Her videos attracted several generations of viewers. In videos of her she is seen preparing all kinds of meals, she is heard sinking her teeth into sandwiches or crispy potatoes, and she is shown karate-chopping ramen noodles and much more.
Ms Davis was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2019, which affected her voice. Two years later she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. In one video, she bakes cookies for the medical workers who treated her.
In addition to her daughter Hannah and her children, Mrs. Davis is survived by her second husband, Keith Davis; another daughter, Becky Steinberg; two siblings, Jay Yamada and Karen Dolce Yamada; and two grandchildren. Her first marriage, to Hank Steinberg, ended in divorce.
In her later years, Ms. Davis traveled around the world and met people, as well as cooking and eating amazing food, Sean Davis said. He added: “I think her final chapter was exactly how she would have wanted it written.”
