Bizarre Things About The Barefoot Contessa's Marriage

Feelings Drama

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00:00Celebrity food personality and best-selling cookbook author Ina Garten and her husband

00:05of nearly 50 years, Yale professor Jeffrey Garten, are hashtag couple goals for the hardcore

00:11Food Network fan.

00:13After first laying eyes on each other in the early 60s, these two have lived a love story

00:18for the ages and, if you've ever seen them on TV adorably fawning all over each other,

00:23you know that these two are the real deal.

00:25Every last chapter of Ina and Jeffrey's life together shows they're in it for the long

00:29haul and will forever be into one another.

00:32Here are some of the stranger things you didn't know about the delightful, love-fueled, and

00:36filled entity that is the Gartons.

00:40Love at first sight

00:42When Ina Garten was 15 years old, she and her parents visited her brother who was studying

00:46at Dartmouth College, where Jeffrey Garten also happened to be matriculating.

00:51Ina recounted the story in her cookbook, Cooking for Jeffrey, writing,

00:55Unbeknownst to me, Jeffrey and his roommate were in the college library studying as I

01:00walked by outside.

01:01Jeffrey just happened to look up at that moment.

01:04He asked his roommate,

01:05Who's that girl?

01:06Strangely, the roommate did know that girl.

01:09It was Ina Rosenberg, and he had a date with her that night, set up by Ina's brother.

01:15Jeffrey ignored the competition from his roommate and went for it anyway.

01:18He got her address and sent Ina a letter.

01:21In her book, she recalls the moment, writing,

01:23I received a beautiful handwritten letter in the mail, with a photograph of the most adorable

01:28guy I'd ever seen.

01:30A few months later, Jeffrey came to visit Ina in Connecticut, and she tried to take him

01:34to a bar, despite being only 16.

01:37Naturally, they were refused service.

01:39In her book, she recounts the experience, saying,

01:41I'd never actually been to a bar, but I figured that's where a college guy would expect to go,

01:47right?

01:48A romantic marriage

01:50While people got married younger in the good old days, Ina and Jeffrey were shockingly young

01:54when they got hitched.

01:56When Jeffrey and Ina made their love state official in 1968, he was 22 years old, and

02:01she was only 20.

02:02But it's worth mentioning that the couple were together for nearly five years before they

02:05tied the knot.

02:06Pissed to putting up with me for 45 years.

02:09Oh, God.

02:10The ceremony took place at Ina's parents' home three days before Christmas.

02:14In an interview with People, Ina described the romantic day, saying,

02:18It was a perfect day for a wedding.

02:21Right in the middle of the ceremony, it started to snow.

02:24When she answered Vanity Fair's Proust questionnaire in 2016, Ina said that her greatest regret was,

02:30quote, not marrying Jeffrey Sooner.

02:33If your biggest mistake isn't locking down the love of your life as quickly as possible,

02:37then you have led a charmed life.

02:39The Gartons go to Washington

02:42Believe it or not, Ina Garten once worked in a field about as totally opposite to making

02:47high-end comfort food as you can get.

02:49She worked for the feds.

02:50I was working at OMB, Office of Management and Budget.

02:53For the federal government?

02:54Yeah, for Ford and Carter.

02:57And I worked on nuclear energy policy.

03:00Not to be outdone, Jeffrey Garten contributed his expertise in economics to four presidential

03:05administrations, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.

03:10For the latter, Garten was the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade, focusing

03:15on emerging markets.

03:17So they've both been close to the room where it happens.

03:20Isn't it nice when couples have things in common?

03:23Changing careers

03:24Ina Garten may be one of the most famous names in American food, but she didn't go to

03:29culinary school, and she isn't a chef.

03:32She made her mark because she had a love, passion, and knowledge for the culinary arts,

03:37coupled with opportunity.

03:38By 1978, she'd burned out on working in nuclear policy and was ready to make a major career

03:44change.

03:45At the time, Garten also had a good side hustle flipping houses.

03:49It was about then when she saw a classified ad about a small, full-service specialty food

03:54store, the Barefoot Contessa, for sale in the Hamptons.

03:57I went home and I told Jeffrey about it, and he said, pick something you love to do.

04:02If you love doing it, you'll be really good at it.

04:04Despite not having any prior experience in the food world, she ran the store for nearly

04:09two decades.

04:11Long-distance relationship

04:12Both Jeffrey and Ina Garten have enjoyed extremely successful and busy careers in their respective

04:19lines of work.

04:20While Ina ran a store and parlayed it into a career as a TV personality and author of

04:2511 cookbooks, Jeffrey Garten became one of the world's foremost minds on business, finance,

04:31and international trade.

04:33In 1995, he was named the dean of the Yale School of Management.

04:37He held the position for 10 years before stepping down, but he remains on staff as an instructor,

04:43with the title of Dean Emeritus.

04:45According to his Yale profile, he's also worked on mergers and acquisitions in the private sector,

04:50written a monthly column about global business for Business Week, and found the time to write

04:55six books on economics.

04:57All of this is to say that the Gartons don't see each other too much during the week.

05:02Ina stays in East Hampton working on her career as a food icon, and Jeffrey hangs out at Yale

05:07up in New Haven, Connecticut.

05:09One thing we always do is we always connect with each other during the day, and the thing

05:12is, even though he's away, he's like this anchor in the middle of my life.

05:16C'est la vie

05:17Together, Jeffrey and Ina have lived a shared life of seemingly boundless love, romance,

05:23and whimsy.

05:24For Jeffrey, it all culminated on one very special day, which, in an interview with Food Network,

05:30he called the single best moment in his life with Ina.

05:33So I've got another surprise for you.

05:35It went down in May 2002, when Jeffrey took a red-eye flight from New York City to Paris

05:41and then took a cab to a building he'd never visited before, despite many memorable trips

05:46to the City of Light with his wife.

05:47Ina buzzed him up to an apartment.

05:50This was a little place in Paris that Ina had purchased a year before and extensively

05:54remodeled, all without ever showing Jeffrey a single picture or revealing any details.

06:00In an interview with the Food Network, Ina said,

06:02"...the secret to a happy marriage is that he trusted me.

06:05I wanted it to be a surprise."

06:07No kids?

06:08No problem

06:09Both Jeffrey and Ina Garten are in their 70s now, so the opportunity for them to have children,

06:15at least biologically, has passed.

06:17Jeffrey and Ina consciously made the decision together to not start a family, or rather,

06:21make theirs larger.

06:22In 2017, Ina Garten opened up about their decision on the Katie Couric podcast.

06:27We decided not to have children, but I really felt, I feel that I would never have been

06:31able to have the life I've had.

06:34And so it's a choice.

06:35The secret chicken

06:37Viewers of Ina Garten's shows know that, when she and Jeffrey reunite each week, they often

06:42dine on roast chicken.

06:44At least for that reason, the roast chicken is a very important dish to the woman who makes

06:48great food for a living.

06:50And she thinks it should be an important dish for just about everybody, too.

06:53One of the great gifts that you can give people is to cook for them.

06:58In 2017, Ina told Time that the first thing anyone should learn how to cook, in addition

07:03to coffee, should be a roast chicken.

07:05It's a special meal she enjoys with her husband, but it's also apparently a special meal that

07:10can land a person a spouse.

07:12In 2018, Ina Garten told NBC's Today,

07:15I met some young women, and they told me they call the roast chicken in the Barefoot Contessa

07:20cookbook engagement chicken, because they found that every woman in the office that made it

07:24for their boyfriend was engaged within 24 hours.

07:27It may have even worked for the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

07:31In 2016, the soon-to-be Duchess told Good Housekeeping,

07:34There is nothing as delicious or impressive as a perfectly roasted chicken.

07:39If you have an Ina Garten-level roasted chicken recipe, it's a game-changer.

07:43And in their first interview after their engagement, the couple shared details on the night that

07:48Prince Harry popped the question.

07:49It's a standard, typical night for us.

07:52It's a cozy night.

07:53What were we doing?

07:54Just roasting chicken and having to…

07:56Roasting a chicken.

07:57Trying to roast a chicken.

07:58Trying to roast a chicken.

07:59Guess that's how Markle snagged Prince Harry, and how Ina's kept Geoffrey happy for decades.

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