Celebrity food personality and bestselling
cookbook author Ina Garten, and her husband of nearly 50 years, Yale professor Jeffrey
Garten, are #couplegoals for the hardcore Food Network fan. After first laying eyes on each other in the
early '60s, these two have lived a love story for the ages, and, if you've ever seen them
on TV adorably fawning all over each other, you know that these two are the real deal. Every last chapter of Ina and Jeffrey's life
together shows they're in it for the long haul and will forever be into one another. Here are some of the stranger things you didn't
know about the delightful, love-fueled-and-filled entity that is the Gartens. Love at first sight When Ina Garten was 15 years old, she and
her parents visited her brother, who was studying at Dartmouth College, where Jeffrey Garten
also happened to be matriculating. Ina recounted the story in her in her cookbook
Cooking for Jeffrey, writing, "Unbeknownst to me, Jeffrey and his roommate
were in the college library studying as I walked by outside. Jeffrey just happened to look up at that moment. He asked his roommate, 'Who's that girl?' Strangely, the roommate did know that girl,
it was Ina Rosenberg, and he had a date with her that night, set up by Ina's brother. Jeffrey ignored the competition from his roommate
and went for it anyway. He got her address and sent Ina a letter. In her book she recalls the moment, writing, "[I] received a beautiful handwritten letter
in the mail […] with a photograph of the most adorable guy I'd ever seen." A few months later, Jeffrey came to visit
Ina in Connecticut and she tried to take him to a bar… despite being only 16. Naturally, they were refused service. In her book, she recounts the experience,
saying "I'd never actually been to a bar, but I figured
that's where a college guy would expect to go, right?" A romantic marriage While people got married younger in the good
old days, Ina and Jeffrey were shockingly young when they got hitched. When Jeffrey and Ina made their love state-official
in 1968, he was 22-years-old and she was only 20. But it's worth mentioning that the couple
were together for nearly five years before they tied the knot. "This is to putting up with me for 45 years.” The ceremony took place at Ina's parents'
home three days before Christmas. In an interview with People, Ina described
the romantic day, saying "It was a perfect day for a wedding. Right in the middle of the ceremony, it started
to snow." When she answered Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire
in 2016, Ina said that her "greatest regret" was, quote, "not marrying Jeffrey sooner." If your biggest mistake isn't locking down
the love of your life as quickly as possible, then you have led a charmed life. The Gartens go to Washington Believe it or not, Ina Garten once worked
in a field about as totally opposite to making high-end comfort food as you can get: She
worked for the feds. “I was working with OMB, Office of Management
and Budget.” “For the Federal government?” “Yeah. For Ford and Carter, and I worked on nuclear
energy policy.” Not to be outdone, Jeffrey Garten contributed
his expertise in economics to four presidential administrations: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. For the latter, Garten was the undersecretary
of commerce for international trade, focusing on emerging markets. So, they've both been close to the room where
it happens. Isn't it nice when couples have things in
common? Changing careers Ina Garten may be one of the most famous names
in American food, but she didn't go to culinary school and she isn't a chef. She made her mark because she had a love,
passion, and knowledge for the culinary arts, coupled with opportunity. By 1978, she'd burned out on working in nuclear
policy and was ready to make a major career change. At the time, Garten also had a good side hustle
flipping houses, it was about then when she saw a classified ad about a small, full-service
specialty foods store, the Barefoot Contessa, for sale in the Hamptons. “I went home and I told Jeffrey about it,
and he said pick something you’ll love to do. If you love doing it you’ll be really good
at it” Despite not having any prior experience in
the food world, she ran the store for nearly two decades. Long distance relationship Both Jeffrey and Ina Garten have enjoyed extremely
successful and busy careers in their respective lines of work. While Ina ran a store and parlayed it into
a career as a TV personality and author of 11 cookbooks, Jeffrey Garten became one of
the world's foremost minds on business, finance, and international trade. In 1995, he was named the dean of the Yale
School of Management. He held the position for ten years before
stepping down, but he remains on staff as an instructor with the title of Dean Emeritus. According to his Yale profile, he's also worked
on mergers and acquisitions in the private sector, written a monthly column about global
business for BusinessWeek, and found the time to write six books on economics. All of this is to say that the Gartens don't
see each other too much during the week. Ina stays in East Hampton working on her career
as a food icon, and Jeffrey hangs out at Yale up in New Haven, Connecticut. “One thing we always do is we always connect
with each other during the day. And the thing is, even though he’s away,
he’s like this anchor in the middle of my life.” C’est la vie! Together, Jeffrey and Ina have lived a shared
life of seemingly boundless love, romance, and whimsy. For Jeffrey, it all culminated on one very
special day, which, in an interview with Food Network, he called the "single best moment
in his life with Ina." “So I’ve got another surprise for you…” It went down in May 2002, when Jeffrey took
a red-eye flight from New York City to Paris and then took a cab to a building he'd never
visited before, despite many memorable trips to the City of Light with his wife. Ina buzzed him up to an apartment. This was a little place in Paris that Ina
had purchased a year before and extensively remodeled … all without ever showing Jeffrey
a single picture or revealing any details. In an interview with the Food Network, Ina
said, "The secret to a happy marriage is that he
trusted me. I wanted it to be a surprise." No kids, no problem Both Jeffrey and Ina Garten are in their 70s
now, so the opportunity for them to have children, at least biologically, has passed. Jeffrey and Ina consciously made the decision
together to not start a family, or rather, make theirs larger. In 2017, Ina Garten opened up about their
decision on The Katie Couric Podcast, "We decided not to have children" "But I really felt, I feel, that I would have
never been able to have the life I've had...and so it's a choice." The secret chicken Viewers of Ina Garten's shows know that, when
she and Jeffrey reunite each week, they often dine on roast chicken. At least for that reason, the roast chicken
is a very important dish to the woman who makes great food for a living … and she
thinks it should be an important dish for just about everybody, too. “One of the great gifts you can give to
people is to cook for them.” In 2017, Ina told Time that the first thing
anyone should learn how to cook, in addition to coffee, should be a "roast chicken." It's a special meal she enjoys with her husband,
but it's also apparently a special meal that can land a person a spouse. In 2018, Ina Garten told NBC's Today, "[I] met some young women [...] and they told
me they call the roast chicken in [...] The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, 'Engagement Chicken,'
because they found that every woman in the office that made it for their boyfriend was
engaged within 24 hours." It may have even worked for the Duchess of
Sussex, Meghan Markle. In 2016, the soon-to-be Duchess told Good
Housekeeping, "There is nothing as delicious (or impressive)
as a perfectly roasted chicken. If you have an Ina Garten-level roasted-chicken
recipe, it's a game changer." And in their first interview after their engagement,
the couple shared details on the night that Prince Harry popped the question. “It was just a standard typical night for
us" "Cozy night, what were we doing? Roasting chicken and-” “Trying to roast a chicken.” Guess that's how Markle snagged Prince Harry,
and how Ina's kept Jeffrey happy for decades.
