Ina Garten, or the Barefoot Contessa (as she's widely known), is one of the most popular TV chefs in the U.S. Over the course of her career, she has shown viewers of her TV shows and readers of her cookbooks how to pull together more than 1,000 crowd-pleasing recipes, from soups to cakes to pies and so much more. This arguably puts her in the same league as names like Julia Child, Rachael Ray, and Martha Stewart.

But Garten's journey to chef and TV stardom hasn't been easy. She had a rough childhood, due to an abusive, violent father and an unsupportive mother. Her marriage to her husband Jeffrey Garten has largely been positive, but there have been some major ups and downs along the way. And while she used to be friends with Martha Stewart, it didn't work out. Garten speaks about all of these things quite candidly in various interviews and in her memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," released in 2024. Read on to find out more about Garten, from her tricky start in life to her decision not to have children to what really happened to the Barefoot Contessa store in The Hamptons.

Ina Garten was raised in Brooklyn (and later Connecticut) with her brother, Ken Rosenberg, in a multi-generational home with both her parents and her grandparents. In the past, she has described this home as warm and inviting. She told House Beautiful in 2024 that her grandmother, Bessie, cooked for people regularly, and friends and relatives would often "go to the refrigerator to help themselves" to food and drink. It sounds like a happy, welcoming atmosphere, but things weren't always so pleasant.