9 Things You Didn’t Know About Ina and Jeffrey Garten

If the title of Ina Garten’s latest cookbook seems antiquated, don’t let the name—Cooking for Jeffrey—fool you: It’s not a how-to-keep-your-man-happy guidebook, it’s a 256-page love letter to the Barefoot Contessa’s husband of 48 years, Jeffrey.

The cookbook’s been deemed her most personal yet, with passages and recipe headnotes revealing fresh insights into Garten’s life when cameras aren’t rolling, and how her relationship with her husband has been both her a source of strength and inspiration (so, basically, #relationshipgoals). Before you check out the book on Tuesday, here are some things to know about the couple—including how we may not have known the Food Network star at all if it weren’t for one simple, yet powerful, comment.

1. Their First Date Was A Disaster.

Jeffrey first spotted Ina when she was visiting her brother at Dartmouth and got her address so he could write her a letter. A few months later, he visited her in her Connecticut hometown, where the then 16-year-old Ina took him to a bar, since “that’s where a college guy would expect to go, right?” The bouncer turned them away, but they wound up going to a coffee shop instead.

“Decades later, I asked Jeffrey why he wanted to see me again after that mortifying first date and he said, ‘I decided you needed taking care of,'” she writes, as the intro to the section on cocktail recipes.

2. Jeffrey Said This—And It Changed Ina’s Life Forever.

Just a year after getting married, Jeffrey turned to Ina and said, “You need to do something with your life, or you’ll never be happy.” A blunt phrase, to be sure, which Garten writes “stopped [her] short.” It started her on a journey toward following her passion for cooking, inspiring her to manage Barefoot Contessa, a specialty food store in the Hamptons, then become its manager and chef.

“I often say he’s the first feminist I ever knew; he believed that I could do anything I wanted to,” she explains.

3. Ina’s the “Center of His Life.”

When the Washington Post asked Ina how Jeffrey cares for her, her reply was simple—and striking. “I am absolutely the center of his life,” she said. “I walk in the room, and he goes, ‘Okay, what are we doing?’ He just drops everything. He’s also been the brains behind everything I’ve done. He’s invested, literally.”

4. She Got Her Pilot’s License While Jeffrey Was Deployed.

When Jeffrey served in the Vietnam War, Ina wasn’t sitting at home baking cookies (well, who knows, maybe sometimes she was). She took flying lessons and got her pilot’s license.

5. Jeffrey Was the Dean of the Yale School of Management for 10 Years.

He’s been teaching there ever since stepping down in 2005, according to his Yale faculty page. Before that, he served as the undersecretary of commerce for international trade, and he spent 13 years working on Wall Street.

6. Ina Actually Cooks from Her Cookbooks.

She’s not a big fan of winging it, she told Food Network, and prefers using exact measurements and following her recipes, no matter how many times she’s done them.

7. Jeffrey Doesn’t Cook, But He Makes This Well.

“He makes really good coffee, which I desperately need in the morning,” Ina told the Tampa Bay Times.

8. Jeffrey and Ina Initially Worried Barefoot Contessa Would Fail.

Just after taking over Barefoot Contessa, the specialty foods store, Ina met with the former owner, Diana, who showed her how to cash out the register. It contained $85. Total. Jeffrey quickly did the math, multiplying $85 by the number of days that summer, and told her “I don’t think you’re going to make it,” she wrote in Cooking for Jeffrey. Little did they know that the next day, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, would change everything—it was the start of the summer busy season. They sold out of their entire stock that next day, and Ina and the former owner wound up staying up all night cooking, just to replenish their supplies.

“At about three in the morning I remember thinking that buying a store with no experience may have been the stupidest thing I’d ever done,” she wrote.

9. Her Biggest Regret in Life Will Give You All the Feels.

“Not marrying Jeffrey sooner,” she said, when answering the Proust questionnaire for Vanity Fair earlier this year.

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