Ina Garten Reveals Secret to Long-Lasting Marriage to Husband Jeffrey: ‘He Unloads the Dishwasher’ (Exclusive)

Ina Garten is giving Us her recipe for a long-lasting marriage.

Garten, 77, gushed over her marriage to Jeffrey Garten while speaking exclusively with Us Weekly on Friday, April 11, ahead of the announcement that the Barefoot Contessa would join Willie Geist as a guest on Sunday Sitdown on Monday, May 19.

“[He] never tells me what to do, always just totally supportive,” Ina, who married Jeffrey, 78, in 1968, told Us. “And yes, he writes me love letters, and every once in a while he sends them to the wrong person. Which leads to some polarity.”

Ina revealed to Us that her husband has accidentally sent a love letter to publicist Kate Tyler, who “sent it back and said, ‘I don’t think this was meant for me.’” She added, “He’s done that more than once.”

The pair briefly separated at one point during their marriage, but ultimately reconciled. In her 2024 memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens, she wrote, “Moving forward, we could be equals who took care of each other. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but if we worked toward the same goal, we could change things together.”

Beyond that, for Ina, the secret to a long-lasting relationship is “really very simple,” she told Us.

“He’s the most important thing in my life and he makes me feel like I’m the most important thing in his life,” she said. “And he might be in China or Kenya or New Haven at Yale, but I know that no matter what’s going on, I’m the center of his life. And that’s just incredibly grounding. And I think that’s what makes a good relationship. Yeah. And he’s funny and smart and adorable, so that helps, too.”

She added, “And he unloads the dishwasher.”

Ina noted that having someone to unload the dishwasher is crucial, saying, “You don’t want to have a scavenger hunt afterwards trying to cook.” She’d rather have Jeffrey unloading the dishwasher than have a second pair of hands in the kitchen.

“No, never. He does do the dishes though, which is wonderful,” she said. “It kind of started during the pandemic because I was so overwhelmed with so many things to do — including filming a TV show by myself — that he said, ‘What if I unload the dishwasher?’ I’m like, who would say no to that?”

While they’ve shared many meals together over the years, Ina still remembers the first meal she and her husband ever had as a couple.

“Oh, I remember exactly,” she told Us. “I took him to a bar, but I couldn’t get in. I was too young, so then I took him to a coffee house, so what I ordered on my first date was coffee.”