Ina Garten Recalls Asking Husband for Separation in New Memoir: ‘I Needed That Freedom’

Ina Garten opens up for the first time in her new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, about a difficult period in her marriage to husband Jeffrey Garten.

In an excerpt from her memoir shared Tuesday with People magazine, Ina Garten recalls the period after she left her job at the White House, where she and Jeffrey Garten were working at the time, to run Barefoot Contessa, then a specialty grocery store in Westhampton Beach, New York.

“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles—I took a baseball bat and left them in pieces,” she wrote. “When I cooked, cleaned, shopped, managed the store, I did it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities prevented me from even thinking about anything else. There were no expectations about who got home first or what they were supposed to do, because I never got home from work!”

She wrote that when her husband came to visit her in the Hamptons on weekends, she found him a “distraction.”

“I didn’t give him enough attention,” she continued. “I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could focus on the store. Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted. I wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, able to figure out who I was or what I wanted if I wasn’t alone. I needed that freedom.”

At first she thought about asking him for a divorce, but decided to separate.

“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point I wondered if divorce was the only option,” she wrote. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock him — or hurt him — so I would suggest we take a break from it all to start.”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I told him I had to be alone. I didn’t say if it was for now…or forever. In true Jeffrey style, he said, ‘If you feel like you have to be alone, you have to do it.’ He packed his bag and went back to Washington with no plan to come back. I buried my emotions and threw myself into work.”

When Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter, Ina Garten said she returned to Washington, D.C., where she met up with Jeffrey Garten again and sat down with him to talk at their home.

Then, she said, he asked her, “What can I do to change your mind?” She said he didn’t understand “that I doubted we could keep our relationship together and that we might be headed toward divorce.”

“I simply could not live with him in a traditional ‘man and wife’ relationship,” she wrote. “Jeffrey did nothing wrong. He simply did what every man before him did. But we lived in a new era and that was no longer okay for me. I changed.”

Ina Garten said she eventually told her husband that he needed to go to therapy if he wanted to resume their romance, which he did. According to People magazine, she hoped that a therapist would help him see her as an equal partner with an equally important voice in their relationship.

“Jeffrey’s willingness to see a therapist was as significant as anything that could have happened during their sessions,” she wrote in her memoir. “He was so determined to convince me that he was serious about making our marriage work.”

According to the Food Network star, the couple, who tied the knot in 1968, have emerged from the relationship stronger than ever. They celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary in December, marking the milestone with a sweet video post on Instagram.

“When Jeffrey and I got married, I asked him what he wanted out of life? He said he wanted to be a good husband,” Ina Garten wrote in the caption at the time. “I’d say you hit the nail on the head! Happy anniversary, Jeffrey.”

ABC News reached out to Penguin Random House, publisher of “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” for comment on this excerpt but did not immediately receive a response.

“Be Ready When the Luck Happens” will be available for purchase on October 1st and is available for pre-order now.