An Ina Garten divorce revelation? No one saw that coming!
From Britney Spears’ book to Prince Harry’s royal tell-all, the world’s most famous figures have a lot to say.
The Barefoot Contessa has been a household name for decades. And Ina’s marriage to Jeffrey Garten has lasted even longer.
When Ina confesses that she “took a baseball bat” to their marital roles and weighed separation vs divorce, fans are paying attention. What went wrong?
When did Ina Garten contemplate a divorce?
These days, Ina Garten and longtime husband Jeffrey Garten are still very much a couple. But she did consider a divorce.
In her new memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens, the iconic Ina Garten details how she and Jeffrey separated — and nearly divorced.
This was back in the 1970s. Ina was already busy running the Barefoot Contessa. This specialty food store would one day catapult her into becoming a household name.
As People explains in their preview of Ina Garten’s new memoir, the couple’s near-divorce in the 1970s happened when she was busy as a professional.
Ina recalled that Jeffrey “expected a wife that would make dinner” during those years.
“There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying,” she expressed. “I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”
Ina Garten ‘took a baseball bat’ to her marriage’s traditional roles
Both Ina and Jeffrey Garten had worked at the White House. However, she had quit her DC job to run the Barefoot Contessa. Jeffrey stayed in DC during the week, coming home to the Hamptons on weekends.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles – took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” she writes in her memoir. “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife.”
Ina Garten explained: “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!”
“When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay enough attention to him,” Ina Garten describes in her memoir. “I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store.”
Her book details: “Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live.”
Ina then bluntly writes: “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.”
This is how the separation came to be
“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce,” Ina Garten confesses in the book. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — or hurt — him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
She expresses: “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.’”
Ina Garten writes: “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.”
Ultimately, the two just sat down to talk. “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.”
She said that, if they were to stay together, he’d need to sit down with a couples therapist. He did. And, Ina praises, it took him “one hour” to understand.
That is a powerful story. And, perhaps, a valuable life lesson for anyone who thinks that couples counseling is a waste of time. One session added, what, half a century to Ina Garten’s marriage. Half a century and counting.
Also? It’s a great sign that patriarchal brainrot about gender roles and submissive wives has a greater chance of ending a marriage than prolonging it.
