Ina Garten has been married to husband for 53 years and he still writes her love notes
If you know Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa, you probably also know a little bit about her husband Jeffrey.
But although you may have heard Ina mention him during her show or in her cookbooks, you might not have realized how profound and romantic their love story was and continues to be to this day.
Despite being married for 53 years, Jeffrey and Ina are a masterclass in how to keep the spark alive.
Ina Garten is lucky for many reasons. The author and Barefoot Contessa chef first met her husband over 50 years ago.
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When Ina was just 15 years old, she went to visit her brother at Dartmouth College.
During that visit, she laid eyes on someone else who was a student there: Jeffrey Garten.
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Even then, Jeffrey had all the moves to woo a lady. After their first meeting, Jeffrey wrote her a letter and included a picture of himself in it.
This was 1963, but the old-school romance might still make you swoon!
After a few years of letter writing and getting to know each other, Ina and Jeffrey got married. Letter writing became a huge part of their relationship even in marriage.
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It turns out that writing Ina that letter was the right move! in 1968, Ina and Jeffrey got married.
That wasn’t the end of their letter writing. Even though they had finally tied the knot and settled down, Jeffrey was deployed to Thailand for army service.
This was stressful for such a new marriage, but they managed to get through it by devoting themselves to letter writing.
According to Jeffrey, he wrote letters to Ina every day of his deployment.
They got through all their relationship’s ups and downs with the help of writing letters.
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Writing your beloved a letter is a great way to focus on and express your feelings towards them and your perspective about what is going on in life.
It makes sense that this helped the couple stay connected. Even once Jeffrey returned from Thailand, work obligations kept the two at a bit of a distance.
While Jeffrey was teaching at Yale in Connecticut, Ina worked out of their Hamptons, New York home.
For 40 years of their marriage, they mostly saw each other on the weekends.
The letter writing, and romantic trips to places like Paris helped them both feel loved and secure in their relationship.
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Their circumstances changed at the onset of Covid-19, and they finally lived together 100% of the time.
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But despite their change in circumstance, some habits never die.
Even living together every day, Jeffrey still wrote Ina letters every day.
These sweet love notes helped to fuel their relationship and keep things sweet and passionate even after 53 years of marriage.
Marriage is a challenge, but Ina and Jeffrey are an exemplar of couple goals.
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Even now, Ina swoons over her husband. Speaking to People, she says:
“He’s just the best friend anybody could ever have…he’s extremely smart, and has very interesting ideas on the world and the economy…His career has spanned government, academia, banking, and writing—he’s authored many books—I’m still just in awe of him.”
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And to his credit, Jeffrey also thinks of Ina highly. She says that he was the first person who really believed in her, and that that inspired her to do what she wanted in life. She says:
“He just thought I was really smart and that I could do anything. He was the first person I knew who thought that about me.”
Watch the video below to learn more about their love story!
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Source: People, Woman’s Day