Martha Stewart Shares Bold Opinion on Ina Garten’s Behavior In Prison

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Martha Stewart and Ina Garten are serving two different versions of the truth.

On Monday, September 2, The New Yorker published a profile on Garten, 76, that touched on the celebrity chef’s friendship with Stewart, 83, which dates back to the ’90s. Garten claimed that she and Stewart’s relationship diminished simply due to distance, as the home maestro started spending less time at her East Hampton property, where Garten also lived, and more at her new home in Bedford, New York.

However, Stewart also spoke with the outlet and painted a different picture of the past. The Martha Stewart Living founder felt that Garten purposely shut her out after she left for prison. “When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,” Stewart stated to the outlet. In 2004, Stewart was found guilty of felony charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The businesswoman was sentenced to five months in a West Virginia prison, followed by two years of probation. The idea of her friend shutting her out at a low point greatly troubled Stewart. “I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly,” the television personality confessed.

Stewart’s publicist and friend Susan Magrino later called The New Yorker to clarify that there is no bad blood between the domestic legends. “[Stewart is] not bitter at all and there’s no feud,” Magrino told the magazine.

The two cookbook authors go way back — Stewart actually helped launch Garten’s career. In 1990, Stewart included a writeup of Ina Garten, who at the time ran a local food store called The Barefoot Contessa, in the first issue of Martha Stewart Living. Chip Gibson — the former head of Crown Publishing — shared a story about a time in the ’90s when Stewart was dying to stop by the Barefoot Contessa while driving. “We were in a gigantic black Suburban and suddenly she veered almost crashingly to the curb and said, ‘I’ve got to get lemon squares,'” Gibson recalled. The lemon squares served Garten well in the future; when an editor presented Gibson with a proposal for “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook,” he thought of Stewart and the lemon squares.