Rick Cannata

Rick Cannata was born and raised in Connecticut along with two brothers and two sisters. He was raised Catholic and had a pretty normal childhood, with a paper route and long summer hours spent playing tennis. He went to college in Rhode Island at Bryant University, studying business and restaurant management.

Rick managed restaurants in Massachusetts and New Jersey before deciding he wanted to try something different. Inspired by some Tom Robbins books, he packed up and moved to Seattle. There, he took up several new hobbies, including mountain climbing and scuba diving, and got a job he loved managing a restaurant called Billy McHales. It was there that he met his wife, Anna. They were married on the beach in Oregon in 1998.

Rick and Anna started attending CSL in Seattle around 2000 and thoroughly enjoyed it, taking classes and going on retreats with them over the years. In 2001, they got the opportunity to franchise the Billy McHales he had been working at in Everett, Washington. They owned and worked it together until 2008, when they closed the restaurant, and Rick became a manager with Applebee's for the next 15 years.

As Covid affected their lives and with the death of Rick's father in 2022, Rick and Anna decided they were ready for another change and knew they wanted more sun in their lives. They moved to Southern Utah, which had long been a favorite vacation spot for them. They live in La Verkin and have fig, apricot, and pomegranate trees, which keep Rick busy. He has enjoyed a lot of great hiking and kayaking since moving here, and has done quite a bit of volunteering with Conserve Southwest Utah and with the BLM doing safety patrols at the Wave near Kanab. Rick and Anna were thrilled to find CSL in St. George and started attending as soon as in-person services resumed. They have taken a number of classes, and Rick joined the board in 2025. He has recently taken up pickleball, and his newest hobby is making sourdough bread.