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Ina Garten says she originally doubted anyone would be interested in her life story, which is wild to me. Today we know her as the Barefoot Contessa, from both her successful East Hampton specialty food store and her popular Food Network cooking show. But did you know that before those careers took off, she earned a pilot’s certificate in North Carolina, flipped houses in the DC area, and wrote the nuclear energy budget and policy papers for the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Ford and Carter?? I didn’t!! The Contessa is a Renaissance woman! Thank goodness a friend convinced Ina that her story needed to be told — and by her. Be Ready When the Luck Happens comes out October 1, and this week Ina stopped by the Today Show to talk about the experience of writing a memoir, and the meaning behind the title:
“Well for a long time, I thought, ‘Who would be interested in my story?’ And a friend said to me, she said, ‘Somebody’s going to write your story and it should be you.’ And I thought ‘Oh, that’s a good point.’ And we started on it and she helped kind of bring me to places I had forgotten. It turned out to be a really interesting experience,” Garten shared in an exclusive interview on TODAY April 11.
One of those places was Washington, D.C., where Garten worked as a budget analyst for presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
“She would take me to like the place in Washington, where I decided to leave Washington and said, ‘Put yourself on the steps with Jeffrey having the conversation about leaving him and leaving Washington and you moving on.’”
Revisiting those life-changing moments was emotional for Garten, but she also says that they illustrate how she got to where she is.
“Be Ready When the Luck Happens” is yet another example of Garten’s pioneering spirit and courageous career.
“I think shifting gears was scary. I jumped off a few cliffs, thinking, ‘How is this going to work out?’ It would have never happened if I hadn’t. Having the courage to do scary things is really what propelled my story,” she said.
As Garten wrote the first draft to her memoir, she turned to love letters her husband Jeffrey wrote to her when they first started dating.
“I had those as a record. It was really quite extraordinary,” Garten said. The letters ended up being a reminder of things the two of them had experienced earlier in life.
“There were things that I thought never happened but they were in the letters and it made us realize that, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, that did happen.’”
With her stunning East Hampton home and numerous accolades including a James Beard Award, it would be easy to say that Garten is one of the lucky ones. She says that’s not exactly the case.
“I always thought that I was really lucky, but as I look back, I started to realize that I’d actually done a lot of the work. I taught myself how to cook, I built houses, I build things and that I did it because I loved doing it. I realized when it came to be that I was lucky that I saw a business for sale and that I was ready. It wasn’t just that I was lucky — I was ready when it happened.”
First of all, YES to being the one to tell your own story. Especially when you’ve saved the love letters your husband of over 50 years has written you! As for Ina’s take on luck, I couldn’t agree more. And I thought we’d never see eye to eye again after #Bagelgate. Nothing can replace or shortcut the value of the work you put in. (Well, nothing except for Nepo.) But I also appreciate Ina’s vantage in looking back and seeing how things developed. While you’re living your life, it’s hard to see how what you’re doing in any given moment may be helping towards where you’d like to be. Ina’s realization that yes she was lucky, but more importantly, she had laid a foundation from which she could jump, is a reminder to give ourselves some grace. What we’re doing now can count for something bigger down the line.
When I moved to New York for college REDACTED years ago, my mother gifted me with a hardcover copy of E.B. White’s Here Is New York. One of the best lines in it is, “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” With Ina’s help then, let’s add that if you’re willing to be lucky, you better be ready.
Photos via Instagram and credit Getty. Photo on the frontpage is a screenshot from this video
