In her new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Ina Garten reveals a challenging chapter in her marriage to longtime husband Jeffrey. The beloved TV chef shares that at one point, she considered divorce as a way to gain personal freedom.
“At my lowest, I thought divorce might be the only solution,” Garten writes in her memoir, which hits shelves on October 1. The 76-year-old reflects on how difficult it was to juggle her ambitions and her marriage during the early years of her career.
In an excerpt published by PEOPLE, Garten recounts the 1970s, when she left her position as a nuclear budget analyst at the White House to take on Barefoot Contessa, then a small specialty food store in the Hamptons.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I broke down the traditional roles in our marriage — I took a metaphorical baseball bat to them,” she recalls. “Even though I was still cooking and managing the household, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not as a wife. My work consumed me, leaving no time for anything else. There was no expectation about who’d get home from work first or what they’d do, because I never got home!”
Garten admits that when Jeffrey came home on weekends, she saw him as a distraction. “I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. I just wanted to be left alone to focus on the store. Jeffrey had his life all figured out, but I hadn’t yet, and I realized I couldn’t find out who I was while being with him. I needed that freedom,” she confesses.
She then considered divorce but suggested a trial separation instead. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Garten shares. “I told him I needed to be alone. I didn’t say whether it was temporary or permanent. In his typical Jeffrey way, he said, ‘If that’s what you need, then you should do it.’ He packed his bag and left for Washington, with no plan to return.”
After Jeffrey left, Garten buried her emotions in work, and when the shop closed for the winter, she returned to Washington, D.C., where they were stuck in what she describes as a “painful limbo.” Garten admits she doubted their relationship could survive. “I didn’t think we could make it work because I couldn’t live in a traditional ‘man and wife’ setup anymore. Jeffrey hadn’t done anything wrong—he was doing what men had always done—but the times were changing, and so was I.”
The couple eventually sought therapy and, as fans of her Food Network show know, have been together ever since. Garten and Jeffrey tied the knot in 1968, and she credits him for giving her the courage to make a career leap at the age of 30.