Ina & Jeffrey: A Love Story
Food Network Magazine|October 2016

Ina Garten’s greatest passion for the past 50 years is also the title of her latest book: Cooking for Jeffrey.

Ina & Jeffrey: A Love Story

Jeffrey Garten can admit this now: He thought his wife’s first big appearance on national television was going to be a complete disaster. It was the summer of 1999 and Ina was backstage at the Today show, getting ready to talk to Matt Lauer about her first cookbook. Jeffrey was watching the show in his hotel room as disco legend Donna Summer hit the stage at Rockefeller Center for Today’s summer concert series— right before Ina’s segment—and the woman just rocked the place. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Ina’s going to follow this?’ I was heartbroken for her.”

But Ina came out and did what she has done countless times since then: She won everyone over, instantly. “You just forgot that Donna Summer was ever there,” Jeffrey says. “It was unbelievable.” 

There are a lot of unbelievable moments in Ina and Jeffrey’slife, and when you see the two of them together, laughing about the craziness of their decades-long marriage, you get the sense that they still can’t quite believe it themselves. It’s wild enough to find someone you actually want to be with for 50 years. But Ina and Jeffrey’s partnership has become much more than that: It’s a cultural phenomenon. In the past 17 years, Ina has sold close to 10 million copies of nine different cookbooks, and every one of them has been inspired in part by her life with Jeffrey. Her tenth and latest book, Cooking for Jeffrey, is fully devoted to him. And although these two have been offering fans a glimpse of their storybook marriage for years, neither ever imagined that “You’re the Jeffrey to my Ina” would end up on letterpress Valentine’s Day cards.

 

This story is from the October 2016 edition of Food Network Magazine.

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This story is from the October 2016 edition of Food Network Magazine.

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