at one point in time, Ina Garten To make her marriage a success she needed to add some special elements to the mix.
The 76-year-old Food Network star, who is married to his wife Husband Jeffrey Garten In a relationship for 56 years, they detail their one-time separation and near divorce in the '70s in their upcoming memoir. “When luck favors you, be prepared.” Per People Tuesday
Ina was working overtime to run the specialty food store that later Take her to stardomBarefoot Contessa But Jeffrey, 77, “expected a wife who could cook dinner,” he wrote in one excerpt.
“We did some role plays and I found them very disturbing,” the Food Network host added. “I thought if I just hit the pause button, I'd get his attention.”
Ina decided to leave her job at the White House, where she and Jeffrey both worked, so that they could run Barefoot Contessa full-time. Jeffrey remained in Washington, D.C. and visited the Hamptons on the weekends.
Ina acknowledged how the situation changed after that.
“When I bought the Barefoot Contessa, I broke our traditional roles — going up to them with a baseball bat and chopping them into pieces,” the cook writes in her memoir (published Oct. 1). “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing the store, I was doing it all as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There were no expectations about who would get home first from work and what they should do, because I was never home from work!”
And although Jeffrey tried to visit on weekends, Ina felt it was best to figure out on her own what she wanted.
“When Jeffrey came over on the weekends, he would distract me,” she continued. “I didn't pay enough attention to him. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could focus on the store. Jeffrey was fully grown and living the life he wanted. I wasn't, and I wasn't able to figure out who I was or what I wanted unless I was alone. I needed that freedom.”
The entrepreneur thought about divorce, but eventually asked for a separation from Jeffrey.
“I thought about this a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if getting a divorce would be the only solution,” she writes. “I loved Jeffrey and didn't want to shock or hurt him, so I suggested we wait until we're separated.”
“It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I told him I needed to be alone. I didn't say if it was for now or forever. In true Jeffrey fashion, he said, 'If you feel you need to be alone, then you should do it.' He packed his bags and went home to Washington with no plans to return. I suppressed my feelings and threw myself into my work.”
After Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter, Ina moved back to D.C.
“Jeffrey met me [train] At the station, and when we got home, we sat together on the steps outside,” Ina recalled in the book, “reluctant to go inside because we were caught between two worlds: as we used to be when Ina and Jeffrey were together, and as we are now, sadly. A painful uncertainty.”
The former White House nuclear policy analyst recalled a conversation they had shortly before Jeffrey left for a six-week working trip.
“'What can I do to change your mind?' he asked very hopefully, not understanding that I doubted we could maintain our relationship, and that we might be headed for divorce. I couldn't live with him in a traditional 'husband and wife' relationship. Jeffrey had done nothing wrong. He was just doing what every man had done before him. But we were living in a new era, and that behavior was no longer okay for me. I had changed.”
Ina told the now Yale professor that he needed to see a therapist if he wanted to reconcile. She hoped a professional would help him understand their dynamic as equal partners.
“Jeffrey just needed an hour,” Ina recalled. “He went in for an hour at a time and was a total success.”
“Jeffrey’s desire to see the therapist was as important as anything that happened during their sessions,” she writes in “Be Prepared When Luck Happens.”
“He was very persistent in convincing me that he was serious about making our marriage work.”
In her memoir, she continues, “Six weeks flew by. We talked, we listened, and most importantly, we heard each other when we expressed our concerns. Moving forward, we can be equals who take care of each other. It won't happen overnight, but if we work toward the same goal, together we can change things.”
Ultimately, the long-term couple, who began dating in 1965, came out of that time stronger than ever.
“Thank God I did it,” she says. “I think about how crazy it was and how dangerous it was, but if I hadn't done it we wouldn't have the relationship we have now.”
She adds, “It changed him, but it changed me, too.”
And if you ask Jeffrey, the businessman would be very happy with where he and his wife are today.
“She's the center of my life,” he said 60 minutes in 2023. “He's really the source of so much fun. And he's the center of the house. That's who he is to me.”
