Ina Garten Talks Trad Wives and Her Marriage Confession—but Don’t Ask Her About Trump

The Barefoot Contessa, the 1954 Hollywood-insider drama starring Ava Gardner, is at first glance an unlikely predecessor for the moniker now so thoroughly entwined with Ina Garten, accessible patron saint of decadent home cooks. The film sees a sexually liberated Madrid nightclub dancer plucked out of obscurity by a Hollywood scion, fend off the advances of a series of powerful men, and come to a bad end involving pregnancy and a jealous husband. It’s about misogyny, excess, and ego. Garten, to be fair, didn’t choose the name for herself—the specialty food store she bought in 1978 came with it, and stuck. In her new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens (Crown), Garten, who is less “glass half full” than “let’s fill up that glass,” writes that the film is “about being elegant and earthy.”

The memoir is pure Garten: Come for the pure Garten fun: Recipes sprinkled amid descriptions of her Richard Ginori bone china, of outfitting her Paris apartment with Axel Vervoordt furniture and Christian Tortu flower arrangements. Of Richard Avedon advising Garten on early cookbook designs (she politely agreed to disagree), and of dinners with Nicholas Pileggi and Nora Ephron.

‘Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir’ by Ina Garten

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Stay for an openness not always found in a celebrity memoir—particularly not one whose bread and butter is literal comfort food. Garten, for the first time, writes in detail of the emotional neglect and abuse she suffered as a child, remembering her mother’s canned response to original thought as, “You think it’s a good idea, but it’ll turn out badly,” and how her father told her brother that he wished he hadn’t had children, and called her a “slut” for wearing lipstick. Garten’s resulting mental refrain: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

Still, as a teenager Garten excelled in school, winning a citywide science fair two years in a row, one time for testing the memory skills of lab mice by setting up a maze in her basement. (“I called the project ‘A-Mazing Mice.’ The most ‘a-mazing’ thing about the mice was that they staged a jailbreak and scattered throughout the basement.”) By age 30 she was serving as a White House nuclear budget analyst when burnout hit. “I realized that despite my working on multibillion-dollar federal budgets, nothing ever seemed to get done. And when it did get done, somehow the next year, it got undone.” She saw an ad for a specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, Long Island, drove five hours on a whim, and bought Barefoot Contessa.

Be Ready, which she wrote and researched with the help of her friend Deborah Davis, is a sumptuous testament to the power of resilience, delivered in the down-to-earth, amusing tone Garten’s fans will recognize from the nearly 300 episodes of her cooking program, Barefoot Contessa, or four seasons (and counting) of her interview show, Be My Guest, both on the Food Network. The book is peppered with chatty emphasis. Of her viral, birdbath-size pandemic cosmopolitan: “While I like a good cocktail, I’m not a big drinker.” Of seeing Gloria Steinem in the Hamptons: “I looked out the window and saw a familiar—no, an iconic—woman walking down the street.” And its incomparable muse and raison d’être is Jeffrey, Garten’s husband of nearly six decades, and primary beneficiary of her coconut cupcakes, her chicken in a pot, her tomato soup. Garten seems to cook so that Jeffrey can eat. (She begins one Barefoot Contessa segment on pastitsio by declaring, “I’ll bet Jeffrey thinks that I’m going to make a twist on chicken—well you know what? I’m going to rock his world.”)

For Garten acolytes, the most shocking revelation of the memoir will likely be that 10 years into her marriage, she seriously considered divorce. “It wasn’t having it all, it was doing it all,” she writes of early wifedom, when after a day at the office she’d return home to cook dinner and do laundry. During her first summer running Barefoot Contessa, she realized the traditional roles she and Jeffrey were trying to fit into didn’t work—already, she identified more as a businesswoman than a wife—and requested a separation, which eventually ended in a reconsideration of their marriage, a reconciliation, and decades of togetherness to come.

It’s striking that at this late date, as this election season roils with questions about the role of motherhood, Garten’s decision not to have children still reads as radical. Originally, she feared that she’d perpetuate the dynamic she experienced with her own parents; down the road, content in her choice, she would quote Dolly Parton: “If I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done.”

Here, we talk about some of them.

Vanity Fair: There are all these very lucky moments throughout the memoir, from Jeffrey glimpsing you from afar at Dartmouth, to seeing the Barefoot Contessa ad. But then you have this wonderful reflection in the epilogue about how you realized it wasn’t just about luck, but about your being ready when the luck happens. How have you been able to maintain that mindset?

Ina Garten: Writing the memoir was really a revelation for me, because I had always thought I was just lucky. In the process of going back—and I mean, literally physically going back—to Washington and spending time there, I realized that while I was working in the White House, I was teaching myself how to cook. I was buying old houses and renovating them and learning how to do construction and bank loans and things like that. I was also, at night, going to business school. And I think to myself, now, how exactly did I do all that? But I did it because I thought it was fun.

I realized recently that when I bought the store when I was 30, I actually knew more than I thought I did. I had much more experience, and I had actually done the hard work. And then when I started writing cookbooks at a time when I thought my life, my career was over—when I sold the store—I realized that running a specialty food store and making food that people want to eat at home was actually the hard work behind writing cookbooks. I had much more respect for what I’d done. It wasn’t just luck.

You write about very difficult aspects of your childhood. You write about personal moments throughout your life. Did any part of that feel particularly tough?

When I was writing it at home alone, that didn’t feel so tough. Now that it’s out in the world, it’s a little scary. But I’ve had this extraordinary life. I find it most interesting in other people where they hit walls and how they got around them. And on my show, Be My Guest, I’m always asking guests, “What was a really tough time and what did you do about it?” And so I wanted people to know that I believe that people who are successful aren’t smarter or more creative. They just don’t hit a wall and say, “Well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” They do everything they can to get to the other side of the wall. And sometimes how you get around the wall defines the rest of your career.

Something that’s clearly resonating with a lot of people is that you wrote about your separation from Jeffrey. I think it’s the first time that you talked about it publicly.

I’ve never talked about it.

Why did you want to break this illusion of a glossy, always-perfect marriage?

Everybody has this, “hashtag couple goals.” And I mean, we do have this extraordinary relationship. We don’t fight. We have a fairly simple life together that we treasure. But it wasn’t always perfect and there were growing pains in the beginning. I just wanted people to know it’s real. And sometimes in a relationship you need to hit the brakes and shift gears and figure out what you’re going to do together going forward. And not just that it was important to do, but in fact, we wouldn’t have the relationship we have now if I hadn’t done it.

I think we as women are really taught to sort of wrap ourselves around the people in our lives and not to make demands and not insist on what we want to do. Either we’ve been brought up that way or it’s our natural instincts. But I think sometimes we need to be a little clearer about what we would like, and then figure out what everybody wants together, as opposed to, it’s always somebody else in charge.

In 1978, when you separated briefly from Jeffrey and were considering divorce, An Unmarried Woman had just come out and showed women everywhere that there was life after marriage. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but this year has been a big one for divorce stories. What parallels do you see for women between then and now, if any?

I think it was really new in the ’70s. I don’t think anybody, and me included, I don’t think we really thought about that there were women’s roles and men’s roles, and maybe that didn’t have to be that way. That was what was happening in the ’70s.

I can’t really speak for now, but I think it’s really a matter of two things. One is women finding their voice and their power, and men being comfortable with it. Both of those things have to happen. I think now it’s more men learning to be comfortable with women having their own voice. Men have had a good deal for a long time.

I love that women have a choice now to be a stay-at mom, to have a career, or to do whatever they want. But, in a family particularly, it requires men to understand that women have a right to that freedom.

Did you have conversations with Jeffrey about that story, while you were working on the book?

While I was working on the book, no, we didn’t discuss it at all. He actually didn’t even read the book until it was done. I wanted him to read it for facts to make sure I didn’t get anything wrong. But no, it was my point of view. Although I don’t think there was anything in the book that he would disagree with.

You have these wonderful encounters with various people, but it seems like you were really only starstruck by Gloria Steinem, who you pulled into the store so that you could introduce her to your young employees. What did she mean to you then?

There was a term that was used in the ’70s, consciousness raising, which is really about women understanding that they don’t need to play traditional roles. I think that’s what was happening to me in my 20s. Like, oh, that’s right, just because I’m the woman doesn’t mean that I have to make dinner every night. And just because he’s the man doesn’t mean he has to pay the bills. I mean, the credit cards were in his name. The bank said I didn’t exist.

That wasn’t so long ago! Once you start realizing how we compartmentalize things and say, “Wait a minute, that’s not okay with me,” then it… That’s what I think Gloria Steinem did, was just make us conscious that we don’t need to play those traditional roles. And I have to say, I’m horrified that I did that to her. I mean, I’m horrified. I’ve never stopped somebody in the street and said, “Please come in my store.” But she was so important to me and when I said to the young women who worked for me, “Oh my God, that’s Gloria Steinem,” they didn’t know who she was. And I realized they didn’t understand that she had changed their lives. She was incredibly gracious.

Have you heard of the Trad Wife movement?

No, what is that?

Okay, so it’s largely social media driven, but it’s women who are returning to what they define as a traditional wife’s role of dressing up very nicely when the husband comes home, doing all the cooking, cleaning, staying home with the kids. And it’s created this divisive conversation about where we’re at with feminism.

You know what I think of as postfeminist, is that women can do what pleases them. And if somebody wants to do that, then I applaud them for making that decision. The difference is, we’re not in prescribed roles. If somebody wants to stay home with the kids and make a wonderful life for themselves, I mean, yeah, why not? It’s not right for everybody, and it doesn’t mean that everybody has to do that. To me, post-feminist is women who are strong and feminine. And that’s what I’d like to be. But other women might like to be something different. Feminism is about each woman choosing for themselves. So there’s nothing to me that is dissonant.

I happen to like things that are traditionally associated with women, which is cooking and design and gardening. I like those things, so I’m very happy doing them. But I’m choosing to do them, and I think more and more men are choosing to do them, too. The lines are blurred. I think women can do “masculine” things like build things and run the family finances. And more and more men are cooking and doing design things and gardening. I think that’s really the goal of feminism, that everybody can choose the kind of life that they want to have without barriers. It doesn’t have to be divisive. There’s no reason for it to be divisive.

In a 2019 live interview with Frank Bruni, you said that if you had to serve Donald Trump for dinner, it would be with a subpoena. Looking at all that’s happened since, what would a 2024 dinner for Trump look like now?

Do you know what I think? I don’t want to get into a political discussion about anything like that, if that’s okay. That is divisive, and I think people, each person…I hope they do their research. I hope they’re really careful and thoughtful about each candidate, their decision, but each person’s going to choose their own candidate, and I’m certainly not going to influence anybody’s decision.

Why have you come to that conclusion?

I think there are certain discussions, certain topics, like religion and politics, that a lot of people disagree on. I think the only thing that we can do is follow our own hearts and our instincts and respect other people’s decisions, even if it’s different from ours. And I think it’s the only way we’re going to get along. It’s crazy that it’s divisive and creates anger and violence. There’s just no place in this conversation for anger and violence, there just isn’t. I had a wonderful assistant for 20 years who we disagree on religion and politics. We loved each other, we supported each other, we respected each other, and we still do. And that’s the way the world should work.

You’ve said that once your work stops scaring or challenging you, you get bored. Now that the memoir’s done, what’s giving that to you these days?

Well, I have two books ahead of me. One is a 14th cookbook, which, after writing more than 1,000 recipes, it’s a challenge to come up with new things that are really compelling and people want to make. And then after that, I plan to do a design book, which is going to be a real challenge. It’ll be my experience in doing houses, gardens, table settings, but also much more of a how-to book than just pretty pictures. Like, how do you set a table that’s simple and exciting?

If you were to share tips for an absolute newbie entertainer hosting a dinner party, what would those be?

The first one is just remember these are your friends, and that you’ve invited them to spend time with them.

Which is so easy to forget for some reason.

It’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to think, Oh my God, I have to impress them with this dinner. But in fact, you just need to make something that’s absolutely delicious that you already know how to make, and pare it down to the absolute minimum.

I had some friends for lunch recently, and I mean, I’ve been cooking my whole life—I’m assuming I’m quite a bit older than you—and at every stage I thought to myself, will my friends have more fun if I make the peach tart, or can I go to a wonderful local bakery and buy a peach tart, and we’ll have as much fun together? And so I did that. Will my friends have more fun if I make the watermelon lemonade, or can I just open a delicious bottle of rosé and we’ll have a great time? I pared it down to the things that were really important, and reminded myself that this is about the people, not the food.

The number of times I’ve totally set people on edge because I’m anxious about what I’ve made, anxious about—

Because you’re anxious, exactly. And cooking’s hard. It’s not easy, and so the simpler you can make it and the more you can use local resources to fill in for yourself, the better you are.

You have a detail in the memoir about encountering sriracha. Are there any new ingredients more recently that you have started working with—or any you’ve re-fallen in love with?

One of my favorite ingredients is truffle butter. And it’s white truffle butter, not black truffle butter, because it’s so fragrant. There are a lot of things, like truffle oil, that I don’t think has ever met a truffle in its life. But truffle butter is actually shaved truffles and butter, and it’s just delicious. And for maybe $10, a little pot of truffle butter can flavor a risotto or a mashed potatoes or a pasta, and make something very simple into something really luxurious.

I think that’s something that people love your recipes for, is that they’re totally doable, but they feel luxurious.

I’m always looking for the place where something is both simple and special. Anybody can make something simple and boring, but making something simple and really good is what my challenge is.

You included so many Paris favorites in the book. Are there any that top your list?

People think I go to Paris and go to really fancy places. But what we love is to go out for a late dinner at Café De Flore and have an omelet and a glass of champagne, and just watch the world go by.

In 2016, you answered the Proust Questionnaire for this magazine. And for the question “What is your current state of mind?,” you said, “It simply doesn’t get any better than this.” So what’s your current state of mind now?

I’m pretty much the same way. I haven’t progressed at all!