TLDR: Ina Garten’s husband is Jeffrey Garten, a former Yale School of Management dean, Undersecretary of Commerce, and Wall Street executive. They met in 1963 when Ina was just 15 and Jeffrey was 18 at Dartmouth.
They married in 1968, but nearly divorced in the late 1970s when traditional gender roles almost destroyed their marriage.
Jeffrey went to therapy (just one hour, according to Ina), and they rebuilt their relationship as equals. They’ve been together 55 years, have no children by choice, and split time between East Hampton and a secret Paris apartment.
If you watch Barefoot Contessa, you know the routine. Ina spends the episode making something amazing (roast chicken, chocolate cake, whatever), and at the end, Jeffrey shows up. He’s always coming home from somewhere. He sits down, takes a bite, and his face lights up like it’s the first time he’s ever tasted good food.
That’s “Jeffrey.” The adoring husband. The guy who Ina cooks for. The happy ending to every episode.
But who actually is Jeffrey Garten? Turns out, way more than just “Ina’s husband.” He’s a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Special Forces. A Wall Street power player who worked in Tokyo during Japan’s boom years. The guy who literally shaped U.S. trade policy with China. The dean of Yale’s business school who tripled their endowment.
Oh, and their marriage? It almost didn’t survive. Ina’s 2024 memoir revealed they actually separated in the late 1970s and nearly got divorced. The fairy tale you see on TV was built on some seriously hard conversations, therapy, and completely rebuilding their relationship from scratch.
Here’s the real story of Jeffrey Garten and the 55-year love story that’s way more complicated than the cooking shows let on.
Jeffrey Comes From Serious Military Heritage
Jeffrey E. Garten was born October 29, 1946, into a family where service wasn’t optional, it was expected. His dad, Melvin Garten, was a career military officer who fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Not just fought, excelled.
In 1953, Melvin was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism at Pork Chop Hill in Korea, one of the most brutal battles of that war.
Growing up in a military family meant Jeffrey’s childhood was all about moving. New base, new school, new friends, repeat. This constant relocation gave him something that would become essential later: the ability to adapt to any environment. Whether it’s the jungles of Southeast Asia or boardrooms in Tokyo, Jeffrey learned early how to fit in anywhere.
He went to Phillips Andover Academy, one of those elite prep schools where future presidents and CEOs go. Then Dartmouth College, where his life changed completely in 1963.
He Spotted Ina Through a Library Window When She Was 15
The meet-cute is kind of wild when you actually think about it. Fall 1963, Ina Rosenberg is 15 years old, visiting her older brother at Dartmouth. Jeffrey, an 18-year-old freshman, spots her from the campus library window.
Here’s the bold part. Jeffrey finds out she already has a date scheduled with another guy that day. Does he back off? Absolutely not. He tracks down her home address and sends her a letter. Not an email, not a text (this is 1963), an actual handwritten letter with a photo of himself enclosed.
That’s some confidence right there. And it worked.
Their first actual date six months later was apparently a disaster. Ina was still underage and didn’t have ID to get into a bar, so they ended up at a coffee shop instead. Super romantic. But somehow, the relationship stuck.
Through college (Ina went to Syracuse, Jeffrey stayed at Dartmouth), they maintained a long-distance relationship the old-fashioned way. Ina would take a bus six hours each way from Syracuse to Hanover, New Hampshire, just to spend weekends with him. That’s dedication.
They Got Married Young in 1968
Jeffrey graduated from Dartmouth in 1968. That same year, on December 22, he and Ina got married in her parents’ backyard in Stamford, Connecticut. Ina was 20. Jeffrey was 22. This was 1968, remember.
The country was going through major upheaval (assassinations, Vietnam protests, cultural revolution), but Jeffrey and Ina were creating their own private world.
At the time, their marriage looked pretty traditional. Jeffrey was the Ivy League educated guy, implicitly the head of household. Ina was the young wife. That setup worked fine at first. It wouldn’t work forever.
Jeffrey Went to Vietnam as a Green Beret
Right after the wedding, reality hit. Jeffrey had enlisted in the U.S. Army. They moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg, home of the Airborne and Special Forces.
Jeffrey’s military service was no joke. He started in the 82nd Airborne Division as a Lieutenant. Then he joined the U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, and made Captain.
In late 1970, he got deployed to Southeast Asia, stationed on the border between Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).
His job was training Thai soldiers supporting U.S. efforts in the region and serving as an aide to the commanding general of Special Forces. The danger was real. Jeffrey has told stories about escorting Thai units across the border into Vietnam.
One time, a Thai captain casually mentioned that three American soldiers had been killed in that exact village hut the day before.
While Jeffrey was dealing with that, Ina was back at Fort Bragg. To stay connected across 9,000 miles, Jeffrey wrote to Ina every single day of his deployment. Every. Single. Day. Those letters kept their marriage alive during what could have been a relationship-ending separation.
The 1971 Paris Camping Trip Changed Everything
When Jeffrey finished his tour in 1972, they didn’t just settle into normal American life. They did something that seems totally out of character for a young military couple. They went to Paris for four months and lived in a tent.
This wasn’t some luxury gap year. They were broke. They used $99 student standby tickets to fly to Paris. Their daily budget was five dollars total. To make that work, they camped across Europe, sleeping in an orange tent on the outskirts of cities like Paris and Normandy.
Here’s where it gets important. Because they couldn’t afford restaurants, Ina shopped at local markets. Fresh bread, cheese, produce, meat. She cooked everything on a simple camping stove outside their tent. Jeffrey watched Ina “glow” walking through French bakeries and markets.
This trip is literally the origin of everything Barefoot Contessa became. Ina discovered the “value of simplicity” cooking with high-quality ingredients in the most basic way possible.
When they got back to the U.S., she immediately bought Julia Child’s cookbooks and started teaching herself French cooking techniques. Jeffrey was the happy beneficiary, eating her practice runs of beef bourguignon.
They Were a Washington Power Couple in the 1970s
In 1972, the Gartens moved to Washington, D.C. and became exactly the kind of couple you’d expect. High-powered, connected, successful.
Jeffrey went to grad school at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, getting his master’s in 1972 and eventually his Ph.D. in 1980. While studying, he worked at the White House Council on International Economic Policy under Nixon.
Then he worked for Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance during the Ford and Carter administrations. Heavy hitter stuff.
Ina wasn’t just a political wife. She had her own serious career. She worked at the Federal Power Commission, then at the White House Office of Management and Budget. As a budget analyst, she wrote policy papers on nuclear energy and oversaw the nuclear energy budget for Presidents Ford and Carter.
By her late twenties, she was a key player in federal energy policy.
From the outside, they had it all. Nice house in Dupont Circle, then Kalorama. Hosting dinner parties. Climbing the government ladder. But Ina felt completely wrong. She described the OMB work as smart but “wasn’t me at all.”
Ina Bought a Food Store and Everything Changed
In 1978, Ina was 30 and saw a tiny classified ad in The New York Times. A 400-square-foot specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, New York was for sale. It was called Barefoot Contessa.
This is where Jeffrey’s support really shows up. They didn’t have a ton of money sitting around. To buy the store, they took out a second mortgage on their D.C. home and put in basically all their available cash. Huge financial risk.
Jeffrey’s response when Ina proposed this crazy idea? “If you don’t do it, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” Just like that, he supported her jumping off the career ladder to sell fancy food in the Hamptons.
But this decision, as supportive as it was, nearly destroyed their marriage.
They Actually Separated and Almost Got Divorced
This is the part Ina kept private for decades. She only revealed it in her 2024 memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. In the late 1970s, Ina and Jeffrey separated. They came very close to divorce.
Here’s what happened. Ina moved to the Hamptons to run the store. Jeffrey stayed in Washington for work, commuting to New York on weekends. Seems workable, right? Except it exposed a massive problem in how they saw their marriage.
Jeffrey, raised in a traditional military household in the 1950s, “expected a wife that would make dinner” when he showed up Friday nights. That’s what wives did in his world.
Ina, meanwhile, was working 12 to 18-hour days. Managing staff, baking, learning retail from scratch. She was cooking and cleaning, sure, but “as a businesswoman, not a wife.” When Jeffrey visited, she found him to be a “distraction.” She admits, “I didn’t pay enough attention to him. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store.”
The tension exploded around 1978 or 1979. Ina told Jeffrey, “I need to be on my own for a little while.” She didn’t say how long. She left it totally open.
Jeffrey’s response was painful but respectful. “If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it.” He packed his bag, went back to Washington, and didn’t plan to return. Ina has said this was the “hardest thing I ever did.”
She even considered divorce as the only way to get the freedom she needed.
One Hour of Therapy Saved Their Marriage
They stayed separated through the busy summer and fall. When the store closed for winter, Ina went back to D.C. But reuniting wasn’t easy. They sat on the steps of their house in what Ina calls “painful limbo.”
Ina laid it out. “I have changed.” The old marriage contract, where Jeffrey was the patriarch and she was the supportive wife, was dead. If they were going to continue, it had to be as equals. She told Jeffrey he needed to see a therapist to understand her perspective.
Here’s where it gets almost unbelievable. Jeffrey went to therapy. According to Ina, “One hour, that’s all Jeffrey needed. He went once for an hour and totally got it.”
One session. That’s it. Then they spent six weeks having intense conversations, airing grievances, actually listening to each other. The result was a completely reconstructed marriage built on mutual independence and support. A partnership of equals that’s now lasted nearly 50 years since that crisis.
Jeffrey’s Career Exploded in the 1980s and 90s
With their marriage rebuilt, Jeffrey threw himself into finance. In 1979, he joined Shearson Lehman Brothers. This was the era of aggressive globalization and the rise of Asian markets, and Jeffrey was right in the middle of it.
He started with Latin American debt restructuring (think Brazil and Mexico’s economic crises in the 1980s). Then as Japan’s economy exploded during its bubble era, Jeffrey moved to Tokyo to run Lehman’s Asian investment banking business.
So now they’re living on separate continents. Ina’s expanding Barefoot Contessa in the Hamptons (she moved to a bigger location in 1985). Jeffrey’s in Tokyo doing massive corporate deals. How did they make it work?
Ina went all out. She hired a Japanese artist to recreate Jeffrey’s desk chair from their New York apartment. She furnished his Tokyo place to look exactly like their home. And Jeffrey, flush with Wall Street money, insisted on first-class tickets to fly back and forth as often as possible.
After Lehman, Jeffrey became a Managing Director at The Blackstone Group doing mergers and acquisitions. Then in 1993, President Clinton appointed him Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade.
This is where Jeffrey really shaped history. He was the main architect of the “Big Emerging Markets” strategy. He argued the U.S. should focus trade on ten developing nations including China, India, Brazil, and Mexico. He helped lay groundwork for China joining the World Trade Organization, which completely changed the global economy.
He Transformed Yale’s Business School
In 1995, Jeffrey became Dean of the Yale School of Management. He stayed for 10 years and basically transformed the place.
He globalized the curriculum, teaching courses like “Leading a Global Company” and “Managing Global Catastrophes,” often co-teaching with actual CEOs of major corporations. Student applications went up 75%. Faculty expanded by 42%. And the endowment? Went from $137 million to $362 million under his leadership.
So yeah, “Jeffrey” from the cooking show is also the guy who tripled Yale’s business school endowment.
They Never Had Kids (Ina’s Choice)
One thing people always ask about: why no kids? For a couple married in 1968, choosing to be child-free was pretty unusual.
Ina’s been honest about this. Her childhood was rough. She describes it as lonely and abusive, lacking any joy. “I had no interest in having children. I just had a terrible childhood, and it was nothing I wanted to recreate.”
Ina thinks Jeffrey would have been a great dad and would have loved having kids. But he supported her decision completely. He chose their partnership and her happiness over societal expectations about becoming a father.
This decision let them focus entirely on their careers and relationship. It’s part of why their bond is so intense. They literally only have each other.
The Secret Paris Apartment
Remember that 1971 camping trip to Paris? It created a lifelong connection to the city. In 2000, Ina bought an apartment in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. But here’s the romantic part, she renovated the entire place in secret for a year. When she finally showed Jeffrey, it was fully furnished, warm, ready to live in. He calls it one of the best moments of his life.
They visit Paris every year, often for their anniversary. Their routine is super ritualistic. Bread from Poilâne. Cheese from Fromagerie Barthélemy. Flowers from Marianne Robic. The same places, the same rituals, year after year.
When they’re not in Paris, they split time between their East Hampton home (where Barefoot Contessa is filmed in the barn) and an apartment in Southport, Connecticut.
Jeffrey Is Also a Serious Author
Beyond being “the husband on the cooking show,” Jeffrey’s written several major books on economics and globalization. A Cold Peace (1992) analyzed the post-Cold War power struggle. The Big Ten (1997) outlined emerging markets. The Mind of the CEO (2001) featured interviews with 40 global CEOs.
His recent books are even more ambitious. From Silk to Silicon (2016) tells the story of globalization through ten extraordinary lives (Genghis Khan, Margaret Thatcher, and others). Three Days at Camp David (2021) is a deep dive into Nixon’s 1971 decision to end the gold standard.
He’s not just Ina’s taste-tester. He’s a legitimate intellectual heavyweight.
The 2024 Memoir Tour Revealed Everything
When Ina published Be Ready When the Luck Happens in October 2024, it changed how people see their marriage. The book and promotional tour (Jeffrey joined her for events at the Kennedy Center and other venues) revealed the separation, the therapy, the hard work of rebuilding.
The message is clear. This wasn’t a fairy tale. It was a relationship that almost failed, got saved by Jeffrey’s willingness to change and Ina’s courage to demand equality, and became something stronger because of it.
So who is Jeffrey Garten? He’s a war veteran, a Wall Street titan, a government official who shaped trade policy, a Yale dean, and a bestselling author. But his most important role is being Ina’s equal partner. Not her supporter or her fan, but her actual partner.
The guy who comes home at the end of every Barefoot Contessa episode? He’s the same guy who went to therapy after one hour and “totally got it.” The same guy who supported Ina buying a food store with their last dollar. The same guy who rebuilt their marriage as a partnership of equals and has maintained it for 55 years.
That’s the real Jeffrey Garten.
And honestly, that’s way more interesting than just being the guy who eats roast chicken!
