Ina Garten Reveals Her Thoughts When People Say ‘I Have a Jeffrey Too’

Ina Garten thinks her husband is one of a kind.

The host of Be My Guest with Ina Garten, who has been married to Jeffrey Garten since 1968, chatted about her relationship on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast.

“We have a very different kind of life than we expected to. I mean, we don't have kids, we don't have cats and dogs, we don't have gerbils. It’s just the two of us,” the Barefoot Contessa star said on the Tuesday, Nov. 25 episode.

The couple’s more than 60-year relationship started when they met when Ina was just 15 years old, and their feelings of mutual respect have persisted across all these decades.

“This is what Jeffrey taught me: let's figure out how we can both do what we wanna do. It's not about whether we get to do what you wanna do or I wanna do,” she explained, adding that it applies to topics as big as careers or as small as choosing a movie. “He's so respectful and it's pretty hard not to return that.”

Fans, of course, have taken notice of the pair’s sweet relationship, which they have both documented in birthday posts on Instagram and the celebrity chef wrote about in her 2024 memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

When the SNL alum asked Ina about fans’ comments about her relationship (​​”I bet people project a lot on it,” Poehler added), she was quick to respond with a laugh: “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I have a Jeffrey too.’ And I think to myself, ‘Nah, in your dreams.’”

After a bout of giggles, Poehler followed up with another question, “When people say, ‘Oh, I have a Jeffrey,’ and what do you think they're saying when they say that?”

Ina reflected, “That I have somebody that I have a really good time with, that I just adore, and he adores me back, which is all you really want. Right?”

Getting his family’s approval was a non-issue, she told the Parks and Recreation alum. “Jeffrey's grandmothers, I met them at some family bar mitzvah or something, and Jeffrey's button fell off his coat. And I said, ‘Oh, just give it to me, I'll sew it back on again.’ And his grandmothers were taking their wedding rings and going, ‘Marry her now before somebody else does,’” she recalled.

Also on the podcast, the women discussed their Thanksgiving plans and Ina spoke about what she serves that “people would be surprised” by.

“Well, you know, a couple of years ago, The New York Times asked me to do a store-bought Thanksgiving,” Garten recalled. “And I thought, ‘Who could ever do that?’ So I said, ‘I don't think so.’ And then I started thinking about it and I realized that if you could take a store-bought ingredient from the store and make it easier, wouldn't that be fabulous?” 

“So I went and got Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix and I made a bread pudding out of it, which was so good, it was crazy,” continued Ina, who has assured viewers that “store-bought is fine” for years on Barefoot Contessa. “So I have a lot of Thanksgiving things now to get, like you can actually get good mashed potatoes. But then I add sour cream and Parmesan cheese and garlic, and it's just delicious, and you have no idea that there's a store-bought ingredient in there.”