Ina Garten and her husband, Jeffrey Garten, have the recipe for a long-lasting marriage.
The pair first crossed paths when she was 15 years old and visiting her older brother at Dartmouth College. Jeffrey, who was a Dartmouth student at the time, saw Ina through a window. “Look at that girl, isn’t she beautiful?” he told his roommate, per Food Network Magazine.
Jeffrey began writing Ina love letters, and months later, they went on their first date. As time went on, Jeffrey wrote more letters to Ina, and she continued to visit him on campus.
“It was very fashionable at the time for guys to date women who were going off to medical school or law school,” Jeffrey told the outlet. “But Ina was sending me shoeboxes of brownies and making me sweaters. And all these guys who were after those other women — they were in my room all the time, asking, ‘What did Ina send you this time?’”
Jeffrey and Ina tied the knot in 1968. Years later, the pair briefly separated but ultimately reconciled.
“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,” she wrote in her 2024 memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
Scroll down to see their love story from the beginning:
1963
Ina and Jeffrey met at Dartmouth College, where he was a student. Months later, Jeffrey and Ina went on their first date, and she suggested going to a bar in New York.
“It was a disaster,” Ina recalled to Food Network Magazine. “I had never been to a bar in my life! The guy at the door says, ‘Where’s your ID?’ and I thought, ‘What ID?’”
Jeffrey and Ina instead went to a coffee shop, where she gushed they had a “perfect good time.” After their date, Jeffrey began writing her more letters. “He wrote to me, like, every day. I couldn’t keep up with it!” she said.
While reflecting on their first interaction, Jeffrey gushed, “I don’t want to make it seem supernatural or anything, but I saw everything that was to be. I just knew she’d be the kind of woman I’d want to be around forever.”
1968
They exchanged vows at her parents’ house.
1969
Jeffrey, who had enlisted as an officer in the army, was deployed to Thailand. “I wrote to Ina every single day,” he told People in 2018. “During the whole year, I was only able to call her once.”
1972
The couple took a trip to Paris and traveled on $5 a day. For meals, Ina cooked on a gas camping stove — and the twosome discovered her talent in the kitchen.
“It was the first formative period in her cooking,” Jeffrey said. “All those little shops in Europe — the boulangeries — Ina would walk through them and just glow.”
1978
Ina bought the Barefoot Contessa store in Westhampton Beach, New York, with encouragement from Jeffrey.
1999
Ina published her first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, in 1999. The book flew off the shelves, selling an initial 5,000 copies plus 15,000 extras that the publisher ordered immediately. The success did not come as a shock to Jeffrey.
“She has natural talent, but it’s backed by so much effort and so much focus,” he told Food Network Magazine. “When she had the store, she’d work until midnight all the time. The discipline of her recipe testing and how seriously she takes it — she doesn’t settle for anything but the best. She’s like a runner who collapses at the finish line even though she was ahead the whole race.”
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2002
Ina’s cooking show, Barefoot Contessa, premiered on Food Network. Before the show ended in 2021, Jeffrey made occasional appearances to test his wife’s culinary masterpieces.
2016
Ina paid homage to her husband in her Cooking for Jeffrey cookbook, which includes the recipes Jeffrey and the couple’s friends request the most.
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2017
Ina opened up about her and Jeffrey’s decision to not have kids during an interview with Katie Couric.
“We decided not to have children,” Ina said on the “Katie Couric” podcast at the time. “I really appreciate that other people do, and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to, but it was a choice I made very early.”
Ina also got candid about their secret to a successful marriage. “The secret is that you just take care of each other and admire each other and support each other, and you get that back,” she explained. “If Jeffrey and I disagree on something, he always agrees with me!”
2024
Ina revealed in her Be Ready When the Luck Happens memoir that she and Jeffrey briefly separated in the 1970s.
“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce,” she wrote. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — or hurt — him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
Ina noted that her decision to take a break from their relationship was the “hardest thing” she had ever done.
“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,” she wrote.
The pair reconnected when Barefoot Contessa shut down for the winter and Ina headed home. Jeffrey began pursuing therapy, and Ina decided to fight for their marriage.