Martha Stewart has revealed how her former friendship with Ina Garten went sour, with the cooking titans initially meeting during a lemon square emergency.
Stewart told The New Yorker that Garten – who she mentored and helped turn into a star – gave her the cold shoulder after Stewart was jailed for insider trading in 2004.
‘When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,’ Stewart said, while claiming the scandal marked ‘the end of their friendship.’
‘I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly,’ Stewart said although she maintains that she is ‘not bitter at all’ over the fall out some 20 years ago.
Garten firmly disputes giving Steward the silent treatment.
Stewart, now 83, was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction and two counts of lying to federal investigators and was sent to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia to serve a five month sentence.
The friendship between chef Ina Garten and Martha Stewart never recovered after the TV star was sent to prison in 2004 in relation to an insider-trading scandal. The pair are seen in 1999
In the early days of their friendship, Stewart helped Garten’s career by featuring her on an episode of her show Martha Stewart Living in 1999.
She introduced Garten to an editor who worked with her on her very first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa, named after Garten’s former food store in East Hampton.
A TV show – also called The Barefoot Contessa – followed, with Garten now every bit as famous as her former mentor.
Stewart was forced to observe five months of home confinement and two years of supervised probation and slapped with a $30,000 fine.
Martha Stewart always maintained her innocence and managed to salvage her reputation, yet her friendship with Garten, 76, never recovered. Stewart is pictured outside court in July 2004
Stewart has always maintained her innocence and managed to salvage her reputation, yet her friendship with Garten, 76, never recovered.
The two domestic goddesses met in the early 1990s while Stewart was driving in the quaint Long Island town of East Hampton.
She was passing Garten’s now closed Barefoot Contessa shop when she had a craving for lemon squares in what she has described as a ‘lemon square emergency.’
Garten remembers the first time they met recalling the encounter in a 2017 interview.
Stewart met Garten in the early 1990s while Stewart was driving in the quaint Long Island town of East Hampton and pulled into Garten’s bake shop
Garten firmly disputes giving Steward the silent treatment
In the early days of their friendship, Stewart, left, helped Garten’s career by featuring her on an episode of her show Martha Stewart Living in 1999, introducing her to an editor who worked with her on her very first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa
‘My desk was right in front of the cheese case and we just ended up in a conversation. 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 told Time.
‘I think she did something really important, which is that she took something that wasn’t valued, which is home arts, and raised it to a level that people were proud to do it and that completely changed the landscape,’ she said in an article profiling Garten.
‘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.’
‘It took a while, but I finally understood what motivated Ina, realizing that here was a true kindred spirit with really similar but unique talents,’ Stewart wrote in the forward to her book.