Recently divorced Julia Wallace (Marie Osmond) returns home to Pennsylvania with her precocious 12-year-old daughter, Gracie (Ashley Johnson), to run a small eatery called The Coffee Dog Cafe, which is owned by her mother, Shirley (Betty White).
35-year-old Julia is a paragon of beauty and virtue and believes her cheating ex-husband (Frank) will never find a girl “as good as I am”. Her honesty often gets her into trouble.
Shirley worries that Julia keeps herself too busy with work and has no social life, and has set herself the goal to help Julia find someone.
Shirley has run the cafe for over 30 years (“Fresh and Friendly from Six till Six” is the ad the cafe runs on the obit page of the newspaper) and has been married five times and worked as a hula dancer at the Royal Hawaiian Village (in Cleveland) to put Julia through school.
Gracie attends PS 117 grammar school and receives an allowance of $5 a week. She reads Sassy and Tiger Beat magazines, loves to rollerblade and has not yet developed an interest in boys – although she does eventually gain an on-again-off-again boyfriend in streetwise Nicky (Ross Malinger).
Kay Ohara (Amy Hill) is Shirley’s friend, and Logan McDonough (future Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson in his first role in the US) is the Scottish cook at the cafe. Kyle (Dane Cook) was introduced mid-season as the quarterback of the football team at an unnamed local college, who came in to help out at the cafe.
Julia Wallace
Marie Osmond Shirley Wallace
Betty White Gracie Wallace
Ashley Johnson Kay Ohara
Amy Hill Logan McDonough
Craig Ferguson Kyle
Dane Cook
