At one point in time, Ina Garten needed to add certain ingredients into the mix to make her marriage work.
The Food Network star, 76, who has been married to her husband, Jeffrey Garten, for 56 years, detailed their one-time separation and near-divorce in the 1970s in her upcoming memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens.”
Ina was working overtime running the specialty food store that would later shoot her to stardom, the Barefoot Contessa, but Jeffrey, 77, “expected a wife that would make dinner,” she told People on Tuesday.
“There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying,” she continued. “I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”
Ina decided to quit her job in the White House, where she and Jeffrey both worked, to run the Barefoot Contessa full-time. Jeffrey stayed behind in Washington, DC, and visited the Hamptons on weekends.
Ina acknowledged how the dynamic shifted after that.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles — took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” the cook wrote in her memoir (out Oct. 1). “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There was no expectation about who got home from work first and what they should do, because I never got home from work!”
And despite Jeffrey making an effort to visit on weekends, Ina felt it pertinent to figure out what she needed on her own.
“When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction,” she continued. “I didn’t pay enough attention to him. 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.”
The entrepreneur contemplated a divorce but landed on asking for a separation from Jeffrey instead.
“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce,” she penned. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — or hurt — him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
“It was the hardest thing I ever did. I told him that I needed to be on my own. I didn’t say whether it was for now … or forever. In true Jeffrey form, he said, ‘If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it.’ He packed his bag and went home to Washington with no plan to come back. I buried my emotions and threw myself into my work.”
After the Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter, Ina moved back to DC.
“Jeffrey met me at the [train] station, and when we got to our house, we sat together on the steps outside,” Ina recalls in the book, “reluctant to go in because we were caught between two worlds: the way it used to be when we were Ina and Jeffrey, and the sad way it was now. A painful limbo.”
The former White House nuclear policy analyst recounted their conversation shortly before Jeffrey left for his six-week work trip.
“‘What can I do to change your mind?’ he asked so hopefully, not understanding that I doubted we could make our relationship work, and that we might be heading for divorce. I just couldn’t live with him in a traditional ‘man and wife’ relationship. Jeffrey hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just doing what every man before him had done. But we were living in a new era, and that behavior wasn’t okay with me anymore. I had changed.”
Ina told Jeffrey, now a Yale professor, that he’d need to see a therapist if he wanted to reconcile. She had hoped a professional would help him see their dynamic as equal partners.
“One hour, that’s all Jeffrey needed,” Ina recalled. “He went once for an hour and totally got it.”
“Jeffrey’s willingness to see the therapist was as significant as anything that might happen during their session,” she continued. “He was that determined to convince me he was serious about making our marriage work.”
“Six weeks passed. We talked, we listened, and more importantly, we heard each other when we aired our concerns. Moving forward, we could be equals who took care of each other. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but if we worked toward the same goal, we could change things together.”
In the end, the longtime couple, who started dating in 1965, came out of that time stronger than ever.
“Thank God I did,” she wrote. “I think how crazy that was and how dangerous it was, but we wouldn’t have the relationship we have now if I hadn’t done it.”
“It changed him,” she added, “but it also changed me too.”
And if you ask Jeffrey, the businessman couldn’t be happier about where he and his other half stand today.
“She’s the center of my life,” he gushed on “60 Minutes” in 2023. “She’s actually the font of an enormous amount of fun. And she is the center of the home. That’s what she is to me.”
