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I Couldn’t Put Down Ina Garten’s New Memoir—And This Is the One Sentence Everyone Needs to Absorb

Let this insight marinate a bit

ina garten memoir review: ina and jeffrey in a framed photo, ina garten at an NBC event and Ina's book, Be Ready When the Luck Happens
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Before Ina Garten’s memoir had hit bookshelves, everyone was abuzz about one topic: her separation from Jeffrey. Yes, the Barefoot Contessa—the Food Network star and cookbook author whose 56-year marriage had become the stuff of legend, particularly in Hollywood, where divorce seems inevitable—thought she and her husband might not make it.

This was the woman who wrote an entire cookbook devoted to their relationship! It was shocking—and yet, somehow refreshing. Her fairytale wasn’t a fairytale; Garten was living in the real world, full of ups and downs. And, despite her signature catchphrase, not everything can be summed up with a simple, “how easy is that?”

Honestly, that’s the folly that I—and so many others—made. We conflated her signature easygoing, store-bought-is-fine vibe with her whole life. And, as her new memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens reveals, it wasn’t all lucky breaks. But it did involve treating every break as if it could be.

ina garten memoir review ina jeffrey kiss
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Prior to cracking open her book, I knew the Sparknotes version of Garten’s story: After marrying her high school sweetheart, she wound up working for the White House, in a job she hated, before she saw an ad for a Hamptons specialty food store for sale. It was called the Barefoot Contessa, and despite living in Washington, DC, she and Jeffrey decided to go for it. She bought it, built it out, wrote a cookbook, then several others, starred in a cooking show and gradually became a massive Cosmo-making, chambray-wearing household name, beloved by your grandma and Taylor Swift alike for her simple-yet-elegant recipes.

Admittedly, it sounded like a charmed life. And, without knowing her full story, I balked at her fame. She bought someone else’s company and rode that brand to stardom, I thought. Ina, I’m sorry. How little I knew, and how immature of me to assume.

The truth is, she was raised in a mentally—and sometimes physically—abusive household, with her parents’ criticisms searing into her core beliefs about herself, causing her to remark that even to this day, when someone tells her they love her, she feels it’s a “private cosmic joke,” after her father told her no one ever would. She considers her life truly starting the day she met Jeffrey, because he believed in her—so much so that he didn’t just tell her, he showed her. By encouraging that trip to the Hamptons and buying the store when she had no experience in the food industry. And yes, by agreeing to live apart as she focused on the business, leading separate lives when Ina realized the only way she could become her true self was to learn to stand on her own. She’d gone from living with her parents, under their direction, to living with Jeffrey, looking for his. But what did Ina really want out of life?

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"It was the hardest thing I ever did,” Ina writes in her memoir. “Haltingly, I told him that I needed to be on my own. I didn't say whether it was for now...or forever.”

This was in the ‘70s, in her early days of running Barefoot Contessa. Jeffrey listened quietly, taking in her words, before telling her, “If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it,” she shares.

“I’d asked the only man I’d ever loved for a separation, knowing that I was taking a terrible risk. I needed to find myself, but was I really ready to lose him in the process?” Ina wound up throwing herself into her work, often getting up at 3 a.m. to bake 1,000 baguettes (literally) when her baker called out, and on at least one occasion, sleeping in the store overnight. There was no buying a brand and riding its growing popularity to fame; she had to learn the business, then build the empire from there.

quotation mark

“You never know your good breaks from your bad ones.”

Jeffrey Garten

All along the way, she has challenges (she lost her lease on the original Barefoot Contessa store!) and victories (the bigger store across the street is available!) and yet more challenges (it requires a $150,000 renovation that she can’t afford! She runs out of money halfway through!). And, in the process, you see why she loves Jeffrey so. Early on, he tells her one piece of advice I’ll carry with me forever: “You never know your good breaks from your bad ones.”

That’s it. That’s the secret to Ina’s success—when the bad breaks happen, she tries to turn them into good ones. And trusts that good is coming, even if it’s not here yet.

Losing the lease to the original Barefoot Contessa store, for example, seemed like “the worst thing that ever happened” to Ina—until she found the new space. And when the money challenges came? Well, she took a risk, requesting half the money she needed, then made a swing-for-the-fences proposal to get the other half to finally open the larger store that took her career to new heights. It took pluck, not just luck, to make things happen—and a belief that she could bring something better out of whatever hand she’s dealt.

Jeffrey’s support helped Ina see herself beyond her parents’ limited view. It showed her, as she says, that anything is possible when one person believes in you. But ultimately, what you learn from reading her memoir, is that eventually, that person needs to be you.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens is available on Amazon and in most major bookstores now.

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candace davison bio

VP of editorial content

  • Oversees home, food and commerce articles
  • Author of two cookbooks and has contributed recipes to three others
  • Named one of 2023's Outstanding Young Alumni at the University of South Florida, where she studied mass communications and business