Ina Garten: Jeffrey & I don’t have kids, dogs or cats, we just have each other

I love Ina Garten and I love her hungry husband Jeffrey. I’ve been a fan of Ina’s original show, The Barefoot Contessa, for many years. I’m not wild about Be My Guest with Ina Garten, but every so often, she has a good guest and it’s a lot of fun (mostly it’s just awkward). Anyway, if you’re a fan of Ina, you know that her husband basically only comes home to the Hamptons for the weekend, and during the week, Ina is just cooking and hanging out with her friends, most of whom are gay men. It’s the life!! Like, basically that’s the dream for a significant percentage of heterosexual women. Well, Ina talked about her marriage and her habits in this week’s People Magazine cover story:

Ina Garten doesn’t know her love language but that doesn’t matter, because Jeffrey speaks all of them.

“He’s just so incredibly affectionate and supportive and positive and happy and funny and smart,” she gushes of her husband of 57 years. “He’s just incredible.”

In this week’s cover story, the Happy Hour with Ina Garten podcast host shares that the two “keep it simple.”

“We don’t complicate our personal lives. We each love what we do professionally. What he did [as a financier for Lehman Brothers] took him to Hong Kong for two years [in the 1980s],” she says. “We give each other the space to do what we love to do, and we’re the anchor in each other’s lives. I think a lot of people in a relationship feel like it restricts them, but I feel that since he’s always there, and I’m always there for him, it gives us freedom, actually, which is nice.”

Ina works out of their East Hampton, N.Y. home most days, where she tests recipes for her cookbooks (her 14th, Simply Ina, will be out Oct. 20). When she’s filming her new podcast out of their New York City apartment, Jeffrey comes with her on his way to Yale, where he is a professor.

“We don’t have kids, we don’t have cats, we don’t have dogs, we don’t even have gerbils,” she says of their lifestyle. “We work really hard, and we love the time that we spend together.”

A perfect day off for them is casual. “I love doing laundry. Going for a walk. Jeffrey and I go for lunch, take a nap in the afternoon, read a book,” she says. “Whatever I feel like doing without having to say, ‘Okay, I have to finish this now because I have four more things to do.’ To me, that’s the greatest luxury is a day off like that.”

Ina and Jeffrey met in 1964 at Dartmouth College while Jeffrey was a student and she was visiting her brother. They went through “a little rough period in the beginning,” when she was starting her career and wanted less traditional gender roles at home. (Her 2024 memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens detailed their separation and near-divorce in the 1970s.) They “worked it out” as she puts it — and have been in step ever since.

Asked what her life might be like if she and Jeffrey stopped working, and she laughs: “It won’t happen. We love what we do — why would I stop?”

[From People]

Yeah, Jeffrey is the Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management. He spends the work week at Yale, then comes home every weekend, where his wife cooks all of his favorites. It’s a good life for both of them. That being said, as enviable as Ina’s life really is, I would need a cat or a dog. I would need something to keep me company while Jeffrey is away! It’s surprising to realize that she doesn’t have any animals, actually. I bet Jeffrey would be fine with a cat?? He seems like he would be a good (absentee) cat father.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.