Martha Stewart and Ina Garten have different opinions on why their decades-long friendship came to an end.
The New Yorker published a profile on Garten earlier this month, and both parties explained why they stopped talking. According to Stewart, Garten cut ties with her after Stewart was sentenced to prison.
“When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,” Stewart explained. “I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly.”
Although Stewart always maintained her innocence, she was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction and two counts of lying to investigators regarding her 2004 insider trading scandal. She received a five-month prison sentence, five months of home confinement and two years of supervised probation.
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Garten has disputed Stewart’s recollection of the pair’s falling out. Garten told The New Yorker she and Stewart drifted apart after Stewart started spending time at her new property in Bedford, New York.
Meanwhile, Stewart’s publicist doubled down on the cooking star’s original statement, claiming she is “not bitter at all” after the falling out.
“When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me. I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly.”
“There’s no feud,” Susan Magrino told The New Yorker.
The pair’s history goes back decades. Stewart first crossed paths with Garten after stopping by her store, Barefoot Contessa, in East Hampton, New York, in the ’90s.
Garten previously recalled her first interaction with Stewart.
“My desk was right in front of the cheese case, and we just ended up in a conversation,” she told Time in 2017. “We ended up actually doing benefits together where it was at her house, and I was the caterer. And we became friends after that.”
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Stewart went on to connect Gartner with an editor, which helped her release “The Barefoot Contessa” cookbook. In 1999, Garten joined Stewart for an episode of “Martha Stewart Living.”
Garten went on to star on the Food Network’s “Barefoot Contessa” cooking show from 2002 to 2021.
Garten and Stewart have faced fallout rumors for years. During her Time interview in 2017, Garten continued to praise Stewart.
“I think she did something really important, which is that she took something that wasn’t valued, which is home arts, and raised it to a level that people were proud to do it, and that completely changed the landscape,” she said.
“I then took it in my own direction, which is that I’m not a trained professional chef. Cooking is really hard for me. Here I am 40 years in the food business, it’s still hard for me.”
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