Ina Garten

speaker

688 appearances 6 recordings 4 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 27 Jan

Ina Garten’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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The Oprah Podcast · Oprah and Ina Garten Share the Secrets to a Successful Life · 24 Dec 2024 podcast

How crazy is that? How crazy is that? I know. I look back and I think they left it to 25-year-olds. I can't even understand it. Ina Garten was writing energy policies.

I think when I was working at the White House, actually the whole time I was in Washington, I was teaching myself how to cook just because I thought it was fun. And I was buying old houses and renovating them because I thought it was fun. And, you know, I think my work was serious, but it wasn't really fun. And so I did these other things.

I always thought I'd either go into the food business or I'd go into real estate. And I didn't know which one it was. And so then I saw this ad for a specialty food store for sale in a place I'd never been before. It was in West Hampton Beach. And I thought, God, that sounds like fun. And I went home and told Jeffrey about it. And I said to him, I really need to do something fun.

I really, you know, my job's just not fun.

When I married Jeffrey, I started at baking bread. Yes, yes. I was like, this is great. I can make anything I want.

I think I was starving. I was starving for flavor. I was starving for fun. I was starving for connection. I was just starving. And then Jeffrey came along and he just encouraged my craziest whims.

Well, I had driven, Jeffrey and I had gotten in the car in Washington and driven, I don't know, like six hours to this small town in the Hamptons. And it was April. So it was dead. I mean, there was nobody in town. There wasn't even a cat walking down the middle of the street. And I turned into this little store. It was like 400 square feet. And they were baking chocolate chip cookies.

And, you know, there were specialty cheeses and there was smoked salmon and they were... There were dinners for sale and I just walked in and just inhaled the fragrance of it, the cookies baking and the cheeses. And it just looked like so much fun and it just looked so pleasurable. And I just walked in and I thought, oh, this is where I want to be.

I wanted to come to work in sneakers and an apron and bake cookies. And if they sell, great. If they don't sell, we'll bake something else. And it seemed to me like a big puzzle to figure out. And I love that.

I remember thinking at the time, this is crazy. I don't know how to run a specialty. I didn't even know how to run a store. I'd never had an employee before. I didn't know anything. So I made a deal with the owner that she would stay with me for a month and teach me what I needed to know. And she was a great teacher. And I remember thinking, do I really want to do this?

And Jeffrey said, if you do what you love, if you love it, you'll be really good at it. And I thought, okay, I'm going to go for it. And looking back behind me at running, you know, writing nuclear energy policy papers, just that wasn't an option anymore. So I thought, this may not be where I end up, but I'm going to start the process. And, you know, who knew? Yeah.

Who knew that's where it was going to end up?

What did you expect to happen? Even better, it gave me a life that was just so much fun, surrounded with people that I love to work with, doing something I really care about. taking care of people. I mean, in the store, we've made dinner for them, which was taking care of them. But writing cookbooks, I feel like I'm giving people the tools to make dinner for people around them.

So they create a community for themselves.

What was going on? Well, I think, you remember, we got married in 1968. Yeah. And the 70s women are kind of sorting things out. And when we got married, it was assumed that he would be the husband and I would be the wife and I would make dinner and he would do the finances and we would have kind of prescribed roles. And I think those roles kind of annoyed me in the 70s.

Even though Jeffrey thought of me as an equal, I just feel like, I don't know, we just had roles that we were playing. And then when I bought the store and I found I had my own business and I had my own life, I found those rules really confining. And so I just said to him, I just feel like I need to be on my own for a little while.

And he, I mean, as Jeffrey would, he said, if you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to be on your own. And so we kind of took a break for about four months. And he was to the State Department. He went on this big trip around the world. And afterwards, at the end of the year, we met in Palm Springs. And we just talked. We just sat and talked about what he wanted and what I wanted.

And he always has this great attitude. Let's just figure out what each of us wants and how we can do both of them. It's never about what he wants to do or what I want to do. How can we do both of them? Wow. Sounds like the perfect mate. Sounds like the perfect mate. He's the best. He's the best. He really is. He should be a role model for every guy. Yeah.

He really is so wise. He is. And so his advice is never, this will be good for me. His advice is always, this will be good for us.

I think I was working all the time, and I wasn't having fun. And I remember going to her the first day, and I said, I'm just not having fun. I mean, it's just I work all the time, and it's easy to get wrapped up in that. And these were the days, and it was true for us for a long time, when Jeffrey would leave on Monday, and if he was an investment banker, he'd go to New York or –

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