From White House staffer to cookbook icon: Ina Garten's life in pictures
Ina Garten was in her thirties when she tossed in her job at the White House to try her luck in the food industry.
The decision opened Garten up to a new world, one where she would not only survive but thrive.
Today, she is one of the 10 richest celebrities in the food industry, with a net worth of $90 million.
Here we take a look at the life of a former analyst to US presidents-turned-cookbook queen.
Garten was born in Brooklyn, New York.
She is the youngest of two children to parents Charles, a surgeon, and Florence, a dietitian.
As a child, Garten's mother dissuaded her from helping in the kitchen.
Instead, she was encouraged to focus on her school work. She excelled in science.
Years later, her scientific knowledge played an important role with recipe creation in her career as a chef.
Every ingredient was measured as if "they were a scientific equation".
Garten was 15 when she met Jeffrey, her future husband and one of her biggest supporters.
The pair bumped into each other while she was visiting her older brother at Dartmouth College.
Their connection proved so strong, Garten chose to pause her education after high school to be with him.
"He wrote to me everyday when he was in college and in the military and I put them all in a box and I had that as a record," she told Today in April 2023.
"It was really quite extraordinary."
In one of the letters Jeffrey wrote, he said he wanted to take her to Paris.
"In the beginning, we won't be able to afford much so maybe we'll go camping," he wrote.
"Hopefully, the next time, we will have enough money to stay in a hotel and maybe someday we'll even be able to rent an apartment."
They would make it to Paris, but only after they wed.
At her wedding, her father, Charles, gave her away.
She has spoken about how he and her father are very much alike.
They both love parties, work and treasuring friends. Yet she also shared it wasn't always this way.
"My dad and I had a complicated relationship when I was young, but once I got married we were able to change that," Garten wrote in an online post in June.
"I'm really grateful for the positive happy times that we spent together, and thinking back he had a huge influence on my life."
Garten and her husband have been married for 56 years.
They do not have any children together.
Asked whether the decision not to have a family was because of her career, Garten didn't believe it was.
"I don't think that's why I made the decision," she told BBC News' Katty Kay in November 2023.
"I'm actually writing a memoir now, and I'm kind of looking back at my childhood. It was nothing I wanted to recreate."
Three years after their wedding, Jeffrey made good on his promise to take Garten to Paris.
The couple went on a four-month camping trip to Paris in 1971.
When Garten and her husband weren't travelling around Paris, they were both working in Washington DC.
They worked at the White House.
Garten was a budget analyst and Jeffrey was an economist. He worked for three US presidents - Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
"We were very serious," Garten recalls from that time.
It was during her time in government that her passion came to the fore - cooking.
It was 1978 when Garten could no longer resist a career change.
She saw an ad listed in The New York Times for a speciality store for sale in Westhampton Beach on Long Island.
She took a gamble and bought the store - The Barefoot Contessa.
It was named by the store's original owner.
"The first day in the store, we grossed $87 (before expenses!) and we thought it was a disaster," she said.
"But Friday was Memorial Day weekend (in the Hamptons!) and it turned out to be a very different story. We stayed up cooking and baking all night and I remember thinking how happy I was!!"
During her second year as the business owner, Garten hired a chef named Anna Pump to run the kitchen.
"I had very little experience in the food business, and Anna taught me so much about how to make food that was both simple and elegant, a style that has stayed with me ever since," Garten wrote in an April 2024 issue of The New Yorker.
"This was during an era when home cooks were making beef bourguignon, babas au rhum, and other complicated dishes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Pump went on to own her own store, Loaves & Fishes Foodstore.
