Ina Garten and her husband, Jeffrey, have the best relationship in the world. They’ve been married for more than 55 years, they’re still obsessed with each other, and they are constantly having fabulous dinner parties. What more could you ask for? Well, it wasn’t always this way. Ahead of the release of her memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Ina told People that she and Jeffrey were separated during a rocky period in the ’70s.
The Barefoot Contessa star shared an excerpt of her upcoming memoir with the magazine, revealing that her marriage was not always smooth sailing. The way she tells it, she was just starting to get Barefoot Contessa (the store) up and running in the Hamptons, while Jeffrey still lived in Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that she was busy beginning an empire, Jeffrey “expected a wife that would make dinner,” Garten explained.
“There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying,” she says. “I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”
“When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay enough attention to him,” Garten writes in her book, excerpted in People. “I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store. Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live. I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out who I was or what I wanted unless I was on my own. I needed that freedom.”
Eventually, Garten asked for time apart so that she could focus on her work. When she returned to D.C. for the winter, she realized that she “couldn’t live with him in a traditional ‘man and wife’ relationship.” She said that he’d have to go to therapy so that he’d see her as his equal, and apparently everything clicked for him after one session. Thank God.
As the years went on, Garten clearly became a little more comfortable with being “a wife that would make dinner.” Her 2016 cookbook is called Cooking for Jeffrey and most episodes of Barefoot Contessa are about making sure dinner is ready before Jeffrey gets home. She just had to get her money up first.
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