Ina Garten figures out how to get rid of shame

Watching Ina Garten cry is uncomfortable.

We were at the dining table in her Park Avenue apartment, sharing a chicory salad and a couple of St. Ambroise sandwiches. (Store bought was fine, really.)

Her memoir, “Be Ready When The Luck Happens,” which comes out Oct. 1, is already getting a lot of attention. But not the kind she was expecting.

The book describes a life as it seems in her shows “The Barefoot Contessa” and “Be My Guest”. There were houses to rebuild, travels to be had and adventures to be had It's also a case study of the sweat, savvy, and risk-taking required for a woman raised in the housewife era to build a multimillion-dollar media empire that began in 1954 with a small specialty restaurant in the Hamptons named after Ava Gardner. movie

But everyone, including People magazine and the New York Post, seemed to be talking about the time she ended almost everything with her husband, Jeffrey, 77, a Yale economics professor, and the success that emphasized her violence-filled childhood. on love

Ms. Garten, 76, has published 13 carefully vetted cookbooks, which have sold more than 13 million copies. Although she is a natural writer, Ms. Garten never intended to write a memoir. “He had to believe because he really thought no one would be interested,” says his co-writer and longtime friend Deborah Davis. Mrs. Davis put it in terms that Miss Garten could understand. Writing his memoirs was about control.

“If you don't tell your story,” Ms. Davis said, “other people will do it for you.”

Mrs. Davies asked the difficult question. Some of them had no interest in Mrs. Garten's discussion of one topic: her childhood, which she and her older brother spent alone in their home.

His mother was a cold woman who managed the family's apartment buildings. His approach to nutrition was as strict as he was. No margarine, no butter. Fish and boiled peas for dinner and sardine sandwiches for lunch.

“He was just mentally incapable of having a relationship,” Ms Garten said.

Her father was a pompous, gregarious surgeon who moved the family from Brooklyn to Connecticut when Ms. Garten was 5. He also had anger management issues. He often hit young Ina Rosenberg and sometimes even dragged her by the hair.

“When I got older, I thought about hitting back,” Ms Garten said. “But I was afraid he'd lose it.” He finally did when she was in college, after he hit her for staying out late. “It was truly the bravest thing I've ever done. And he never did it again.” Years later, he apologized and the two made peace.

Even the most amateur psychologist can put it together. Ms. Garten has devoted her career to creating a paragon of the domestic warmth that her childhood lacked. He is a welcome host where no one refuses an invitation and everyone has fun.

Back at her dining table, Mrs Garten became emotional. “When you talk about it I feel like I must have gotten over the shame,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I don't want people to feel that their childhood needs to be the story of their life. You can write your own story. You are not who your parents thought you were, or whatever is wrong with you.”

Still, he wants everyone to move on to other parts of the book. (Like her success is in large part because she doesn't take no for an answer.) “People write great memoirs, and in the middle of it is some sexual abuse by the next-door neighbor, and whoever talks. About,” he said.

The memoir took four years. Ms. Davis played archeologist, therapist and detective, traveling to the former home with Ms. Garten and pouring over boxes of lyrical letters when Mr. Garten first began their marriage. He maintained them through his military tours and worldwide business trips. “He was like Samuel Pepys,” said Mrs Davies.

Their relationship problems came in the 1970s, when women began to realize that divorce was a reasonable answer to “What's wrong with my life?” Mrs. Garten took him for a walk on the beach and dropped the bombshell. She wanted a divorce.

He's 30 and recently quit his job writing nuclear-energy policy papers for the White House to take over Barefoot Contessa, a 400-square-foot shop in Westhampton Beach, New York. Jeffrey was traveling for the weekend from Washington, D.C., where he worked for Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state.

Ms. Garten was exhausted and excited about her new career. But she finds that once the store closes for the season and she returns to their home in Washington, she and Jeffrey will return to exactly the roles they assumed when they married a decade ago.

“It wasn't the stupid thing that bothered me,” he wrote. “It was the feeling that I wasn't an equal partner in our marriage.”

Slamming on the brakes was horrible. She had been madly in love with him since she was a high school girl in Connecticut and a freshman at Dartmouth. “Everything changed when I met Jeffrey,” she wrote. “This is when my life begins.”

Spoiler alert: they made it work. They will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary in December.

When “The Barefoot Contessa,” her first Food Network show, debuted in 2002, Jeffrey began appearing as a taste tester. In 2016, she dedicated an entire book to him: “Cooking for Jeffrey.” Over the years, they've become the country's premier aspiring boomer couple, complete with a magnificent apartment in Paris (which he has completely remodeled, of course).

Their social circle is equally enviable. He has a ridiculous number of famous friends, from the worlds of architecture and art to Hollywood. Close friend of Jennifer Garner. She talks boyfriends and business with Taylor Swift, who owns all of her cookbooks. Actor Emily Blunt says her roast chicken – dubbed engagement chicken – helped win her husband John Krasinski's heart.

Many of these friends appeared on her latest Food Network show, “Be My Guest.” In the sixth season, which debuts Sept. 29, actors Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Wendell Pierce visit the huge, luscious East Hampton barn that serves as his work space for cooking days.

Still, Ms. Garten doesn't seem to realize how famous she is. “A director once said to me, 'You're the only star I know who doesn't want to be a star,'” he said.

The roots of that reluctance are deep. He was afraid to send an Instagram message to writer Anne Patchett, for example, asking her to stay on the show.

“It was a huge risk asking Ann Patchett, because it would be very difficult for Ann to turn me down because of my background,” he said. “And yet I do it anyway. I just pull my courage together and I do it and I think, what's the worst thing that can happen? He can say no, right?

Of course he said yes.

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