Martha Stewart's Sexy Secret: Cheating, Nude Pool Parties, and Fantasizing about Famous Actors

Domesticity diva Martha Stewart is “blatantly lying” when she claims her ex-husband, longtime New York publisher Andrew Stewart, didn't know he cheated on her during their tumultuous 30-year marriage, a source exclusively tells The Post.

“Andy must have been well aware of any and all of Martha's affairs and pseudo-affairs and her many flirtations from day one,” a close confidant of Andy told me. “She knew about all the men in and out of her life, real or imagined. But there was no secret lover, as Martha maintains. Andy knew that Martha was all she could be, aware of every man.

According to the insider, “Andy is very upset” that Martha is using him and their failed marriage — which ended more than three decades ago — to promote “Martha,” the much-talked-about Netflix documentary about her life that begins streaming Wednesday.

In promoting the film, Martha, 83, admitted to cheating on Andy during their marriage. He boasted that it was “very easy” to keep the affair he claimed to be a secret from him for nearly three decades, advising viewers, “You have to be careful” – meaning to be cautious and unwilling to take risks.

As the author of the New York Times bestseller “Just Desserts” about Martha, I revealed that she was, in fact, a risk-taker when it came to her extramarital infidelity.

Among other incidents, sources told me that Martha once ran off for a night with a handsome stranger she and Andy met on their honeymoon in England, leaving her groom stunned and sleeping alone. Later, she allegedly hosted pool parties at Turkey Hill, a Westport, Conn., estate made popular by her magazine, Martha Stewart Living, and her TV show — Flirting and flirting with male guests.

“People chasing Martha, or her involvement, real or imagined, was never a secret to Andy, or to the couple's closest friends back in the day,” the insider alleged. “Martha will do anything for the sake of publicity and to stay in the public eye as she ages, even openly bragging about cheating on her husband. It's all very strange. A woman with little or no morals, no respect for the sanctity of marriage, would make such a boast just to promote a film about her and gain media attention.”

Married in 1961, the Stewarts had a daughter, Alexis, five years later. But as Martha's fame and independence grew, the marriage fell apart. The Stewarts separated in 1987 and their acrimonious divorce was finalized in 1990.

Andy, now in his 80s, later married Martha's assistant Robin Fairclough but that union also ended in divorce. He is now married for the third time, while Martha remains single.

According to sources, Martha would call him “disgusting, obnoxious, oafish” in front of others and treat him more like a condemned slave than a husband, whom many believed to be the brains behind Martha's first publishing success.

During one of those verbal fights, as detailed in my book, Martha claimed she had slept with another man during a business trip to Los Angeles. Andy is shocked, but Martha dismisses the claimed trust as “a one-time thing . . . unimportant . . . uninteresting . . . a mere experiment.”

But others in the Stewarts' orbit from earlier days, such as writer Jonathan Fast, the third husband of novelist Erica Jung, were aware of Martha playing around — sometimes in the hot tub outside Fast's bedroom.

“People were getting naked,” a male friend of Martha's recalled of those gatherings. A similar heinous activity occurred at the Stewarts' home.

On one occasion in the mountains of Turkey, Fast recalls, “Martha spent the evening flirting with a very handsome and very successful married banker. The flirtation was extremely brazen and aggressive. I'm left out because Martha wasn't flirting with me. She was very nice looking, but she always seemed very cold and manipulative and cut-throat.”

Erica, he added, “thought Martha was a bitch.”

Although Martha recently boasted that she “kept an affair secret” from Andy for 30 years, Erica Jung, who was Martha's classmate at Barnard College, believed otherwise.

“I always heard that he was involved with people, he had a lot of relationships,” Jung emphasized.

The Post has reached out to Martha's rep for comment.

During her rise to the top, Martha briefly became a stockbroker and used her femininity and her “great legs” to build a business, as an associate recalled. One who turned out for him was a married stockbroker and colleague, Brian Dennehy, who later became a popular actor.

The two became close and Dennehy called “a strong mutual attraction”; He told me that he could not keep his eyes closed. “In those days, she was skinny and gorgeous and very sexy,” Dennehy said.

Although Dennehy claimed they were not in a relationship, she admitted, “I would fantasize about being involved with him.”

Andy suspected that his wife's boss, Andy Mones, of the firm Mones, Williams & Seidel, also had a “thing” for Martha. Mones denied any kind of relationship, admitting to joking about it: “Martha was my dream girl. He had magic.”

At one point, fed up with her teasing and flirting, Andy confronts one of Martha's more ardent followers, millionaire Andrew J. Stein, who once ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York. Stein told me he sent her flowers and took her out for drinks at Raffles, a romantic private club at the Sherry-Nederland Hotel.

Stein called it “playful flirting” and Martha was pleased with the attention. He thought she had “great looks, and her reaction to me was quite friendly.”

But an angry Andy finally had it. When Stein went too far with calling Martha, He told meAndy finally got on the phone with a warning: “Keep the F away from my wife!”

And Stein did.

Later, as a divorcee in search of Mr. Right, Martha pursues her old stockbroker pal Dennehy, by then a successful actor, apparently hoping for an affair.

“I felt like she had this fantasy of meeting him and showing Andy that she was still viable,” Kathy Tatlock, an old friend of Stewart's, told me. “She said she always thought Dennehy was a very attractive guy.”

By chance, Martha runs into him in New York. He found her more “lively” than ever and took her to a premiere and after party.

“It's not such a bad thing to have him in your arms,” ​​Dennehy recalled.

But it was never more than that.

Why?

As Dennehy told me: “Martha is one of those women who scares the shit out of men.”