In Ina Garten’s new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, the Food Network star claims she fell out of touch with Martha Stewart after moving to Connecticut. They simply didn’t live near each other anymore, Garten wrote. However, Stewart has a very different explanation.
During a recent guest bartending stint on Watch What Happens Live, Martha was asked whether she’s read Garten’s book, which was released on October 1.
“Oh, I’ve read parts of it,” she said.
“You’ve read the parts about yourself?” Andy Cohen asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, before adding that her former friend “can write whatever she wants.”
However, Cohen did not let the topic die there.
“Ina said they fell out because she moved,” he continued.
Stewart quickly said that was “not true” and claimed that her former friend stopped talking after Stewart “went to jail.”
“That’s when I stepped in,” said fellow guest on the show and friend of Stewart Snoop Dogg.
While this may come as a shock to some fans, this actually isn’t the first time Stewart has addressed the alleged rift in their friendship.
“When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,” Stewart told The New Yorker earlier this year. “I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly.”
Following the New Yorker interview, Garten “firmly” denied the allegations. Stewart’s longtime publicist Susan Magrino said there was “no feud” between the two. She added that Stewart was “not bitter at all” about the situation.
According to Us Weekly, the pair first became friends early in Garten’s career; Martha reportedly even played a role in Garten’s success.
“My desk was right in front of the cheese case, and we just ended up in a conversation,” Garten said during an interview 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.”
Garten went on to credit Stewart for taking “something that wasn’t valued, which is home arts” and raising it “to a level that people were proud to do it.”
“That completely changed the landscape,” Garten 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.”
Megan Schaltegger is an NYC-based writer. She loves strong coffee, eating her way through the Manhattan food scene, and her dog, Murray. She promises not to talk about herself in third person IRL.