14 things you probably didn't know about Ina Garten (2024)

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Ina Garten says that her dream dinner guest is her husband, Jeffrey.

Ina Garten and her husband, Jeffrey, have been married for 53 years. The pair met while Ina was visiting her brother at Dartmouth College, where Jeffrey was a junior. After Jeffrey spotted her from the campus library window, he began writing her love letters.

They have been together ever since, despite being separated by Jeffrey's work and service in the Army. Even more recently, the couple makes a long-distance relationship work while Ina Garten lives in the Hamptons and Jeffrey works at Yale University during the week.

"He would always leave on Monday and come back on Friday and I stayed in one place," Ina told People in 2020 of the couple's work schedule and quarantining together. "I always wondered what it was going to be like when he retired. And when [COVID-19] happened, I thought, oh, I guess that's what's it's going to be like ... I have to say, it's great."

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Ina Garten dropped out of college after she married Jeffrey.

After they married, Ina and Jeffrey Garten settled in North Carolina after Jeffrey enlisted in the Army. Garten then decided to discontinue her studies at Syracuse University and focused on cooking for her husband.

However, Jeffrey pushed her to pursue her passions for business and cooking, and she later earned her degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

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Ina Garten fell in love with cooking while visiting Paris in the 1970s.

"I had always thought about French food as 'cuisine' with complicated preparations and slowly simmered sauces," Garten wrote in her cookbook "Cooking for Jeffrey," according toBon Appétit. "I discovered French street markets and simple, seasonal food that was based on incredibly good ingredients."

"It was the first formative period in her cooking," Jeffrey toldFood Network. "All those little shops in Europe — the boulangeries — Ina would walk through them and just glow."

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She and Jeffrey lived off $5 a day while camping in Paris.

Garten told MSNBC host Willie Geist in 2021 that she and Jeffrey purchased a book prior to their trip called "Europe for $5 a day," along with student tickets to Paris that cost $99 round-trip. Their $5 daily allowance covered the cost of their car, gas, and camping fees.

"We bought a car in Paris and spent four months camping in a Day-Glo orange tent that you couldn't stand up in," she said. "You had to get out of the tent to put your blue jeans on. I don't know what the other campers saw."

Food was often hard to come by given their strict budget, but Garten recalled one instance in Normandy when the woman who owned the campsite offered her and Jeffrey some of her extra dinner.

"It was coq au vin," Garten recalled. Coq au vin, which translates to "chicken in wine," is a classic French dish that typically features chicken braised with wine and mushrooms.

"I heated it up on my little camping gas stove," she continued. "And I thought, this is the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life. I need to know how to make this."

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Before becoming a celebrity chef, Garten worked for the government.

In the late 1970s, Garten lived in Washington, DC, and worked for theWhite House Office of Management and Budget.

According toInsider, Garten worked under both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, helping to write the nuclear energy budget.

She mastered her cooking skills by working her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

"I would have to say that Julia Child's my biggest culinary inspiration because she really taught me how to cook through her cookbooks," Garten told Today. "I learned how to make hollandaise sauce the right way, and then she showed me how to make it the quick way without losing any of the quality."

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Garten gets her pseudonym "the Barefoot Contessa" from the store she once owned in East Hampton, New York.

"When I told [Jeffrey] I wanted to move to New York and open a food store, he said, 'Let's move to New York!'" Garten toldPeoplein 2018. "That he would not object to moving to a different state for my career was so unusual, particularly 40 years ago."

It became her new passion project and would be the key in launching her to superstardom.

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She didn't come up with the name "Barefoot Contessa."

The small specialty food store already bore the name when Garten purchased it, but she liked it so much that she decided to keep it. The original store owners were inspired by the 1954 movie "The Barefoot Contessa."

"It was the original name of my specialty food store after a movie with Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart. But for me, it means being both elegant and earthy," Garten wrote in a blog post. "The former owner is Italian and her family called her the Barefoot Contessa when she was young."

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When Garten was writing her first cookbook, she and her publishers had no idea it would be such a huge success.

The first initial 5,000 copies of "The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook," plus an extra 15,000 the publisher ordered in advance because of strong press engagement, sold out almost immediately.

Garten has now sold millions of copies internationally between her 12 cookbooks.

Garten has won multiple Emmy Awards.

The celebrity chef has won four Emmy awards as outstanding culinary host for "Barefoot Contessa" and "Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics." In 2018, she also won a James Beard Foundation Award for "Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics."

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Ina Garten has never had children and doesn't plan to.

"It was a choice I made very early," Garten said during an appearanceon Katie Couric's podcastin 2017. "We decided not to have children. I really appreciate that other people do and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to..." Garten explained. "I really felt, I feel, that I would have never been able to have the life I've had. So it's a choice and that was the choice I made."

Her favorite restaurant is Café de Flore in Paris.

She told Bon Appétit that while eating at the restaurant, she always goes "for an omelet and a glass of Champagne," calling it the "perfect French dinner."

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When she's looking for a fast-food fix, she will eat an In-N-Out burger.

In 2018, Garten posted an Instagram photo with celebrity friend Jennifer Garner chowing down on some animal-style burgers.

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She's a huge Taylor Swift fan.

When asked by Bon Appétit about her favorite song to cook to, Garten responded, "Oh that's easy. Taylor Swift '1989'. We listen to it over and over and over again."

Garten also wished Swift a happy birthday in December 2021, writing on Instagram, "Happy Birthday to one of the most creative artistic geniuses of our time! You are such an inspiration for anyone who wants to sail their own ship. Sending love."