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Ina Garten revealed that she had a brief period of separation from her husband.
In an excerpt from his memoirs,Be prepared when luck strikesThe 76-year-old celebrity chef detailed a difficult time in her marriage when she “hit the pause button” and split from husband Jeffrey. The couple has been considered a power couple since she rose to fame on the Food Network in the early 2000s.
“There were certain roles that we played that I found really annoying,” Ina said. People“I felt like if I just hit the pause button, it would get their attention.”
The split came in the 1970s, after Ina left her job in Washington, D.C. — where they worked at the White House — to found the specialty food store in the Hamptons that made her famous, Barefoot Contessa. At the time, Jeffrey stayed in D.C. and visited her in the Hamptons on weekends.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I broke our traditional roles: I took a baseball bat to them and beat them to pieces,” Ina wrote in her memoir. “When I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping and running the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife.”
“My responsibilities made it impossible for me to think about anything else,” he recalls. “There was no expectation about who came home from work first or what they were supposed to do, because I never came home from work!”
She called Jeffrey’s visits a “distraction” from her work at the store, noting that she had a hard time paying attention to him when she was fully focused on running the store. She added that she felt like she and Jeffrey were light years apart, and that she had a hard time getting to know who he was outside of his job at the White House.
“Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live,” she said. “I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out who I was or what I wanted unless I was alone. I needed that freedom.”
Although she considered divorce at the time, she ultimately filed for separation and found that the time they spent apart ended up strengthening their relationship for the better.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she reflects. “I told him I needed to be alone. I didn’t tell him if it was for now… or forever. In typical Jeffrey style, he said, ‘If you feel like you need to be alone, you have to. ’ He packed his bags and went home to Washington with no plans to return. I buried my emotions and immersed myself in my work.”
When Jeffrey met with Ina to ask her what she needed to get their marriage working again, she told him she needed him to see a therapist. She hoped a third party would help him understand that she was his equal in the relationship and that she had a say, too.
“Jeffrey’s willingness to see the therapist was as important as anything that might happen during the session,” she wrote. “He was determined to convince me that he was serious about making our marriage work.”
Recalling the pivotal moment in their relationship, Ina has no regrets. She said: People that it changed their relationship for the better and he wouldn't change it for anything in the world.
His memoirs Be prepared when luck strikes It will be available for purchase on October 1, 2024.
