Courtney Cook Bales is certainly not the first person to eat a baked sweet potato whole — nor even to stuff hunks of cheese into a baked sweet potato then eat it whole — but she sure makes you want to do it.

Perhaps it’s the wide-eyed expression of complete and utter ecstasy paired with the aggressive head tilt she does as she takes a bite.

Whatever it is, it’s garnered her over a million followers on TikTok in a mere seven months. Her students brought her balloons to celebrate the milestone.

“I do not feel interesting enough for all that,” she tells TODAY.com in her first-ever interview. “I don’t know how this is happening.”

Cook Bales is a 36-year-old high school English teacher and bonsai enthusiast who lives in Fayetteville, Georgia, with her husband, James, and their four childr

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