Her apparent rift with Martha isn’t the only bombshell to come out about Ina’s past recently. In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens—to be released on Oct. 1—the cookbook author revealed that she nearly divorced her husband, Jeffrey Garten, in their decades-long marriage.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles—took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” she wrote. “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There was no expectation about who got home from work first and what they should do, because I never got home from work!”
Ina added, “I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce. I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock—or hurt—him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
