Ahead of their 50th (!) wedding anniversary (and the drop of her forthcoming cookbook), Ina Garten spoke to PEOPLE about how she and her husband Jeffrey have made it work through all the obstacles that fifty years together present...and how they fell in love in the first place.
Ina and Jeffrey first met in 1963. She was 15 at the time and visiting her brother at Dartmouth, where Jeffrey juuust so happened to be a student. "He saw me on the street and then sent me a letter with a photograph of himself in it," Ina recalled. “I just remember running through the house and going, 'Mom, Mom, you’ve got to see this picture of this guy. He’s so cute!'”
She and Jeffrey were married not long after that; she was 20 at the time and he has 22. Shortly after the wedding, Jeffrey was deployed to Thailand, where he "wrote to Ina every single day," he told the magazine. "During the whole year, I was only able to call her once."
From then on, they lived happily ever after. Well, kinda. They both had careers that were skyrocketing (she as a nuclear budget analyst and he in the state department—yup) and had to navigate the whole work-life-everything balance that comes with growing up. You know.
"We were part of the first generation where there was a fork in the road for a lot of women, whether to pursue their careers or stay at home," Jeffrey said. "Ina was a cross between the two. She would send me brownies in a shoe box when I was in college and make me sweaters, but it never crossed my mind that she wouldn’t also do something really interesting professionally."
Ina ended up leaving her job in the Carter administration, as it wasn't fulfilling for her, and buying a little-known store (lol) called Barefoot Contessa (LOL) in the Hamptons.
From then on, they lived happily ever after, each going their own way professionally, while loving each other and being possibly the best couple on this godforsaken planet. Again, they're now coming up on half a century together—quite possibly the happiest 50 years any human has ever spent with another.
The end.
