Tim and Nina Zagat met at Yale Law School, where they both graduated in 1966. They got married, moved to New York, and became corporate lawyers. Years later, while they were living and working in Paris, they made a hobby of compiling a list of their favorite restaurants in the city, which eventually became the Zagat Survey.
The first Zagat guide was published in 1982, when the Zagats were in their 40s, and enjoyed years of success. In 2011, Zagat was acquired by Google, though the company sold the brand to The Infatuation in 2018 for an undisclosed amount.