She was born and raised in Bologna, Italy, and had no formal training as a chef, nor managerial experience, according to her obituary in The Sacramento Bee.

Caggiano moved to Sacramento in 1969 with her husband and started her restaurant after several years of teaching cooking classes at the Learning Exchange adult education school. She wrote nine cookbooks, which sold 600,000 copies, according to the restaurant’s website. She also hosted "Biba’s Italian Kitchen" on The Learning Channel.

Listen to past Insight conversations with Caggiano here and here.

Steve Milne also contributed to this report.