“Barefoot Contessa” Ina Garten says separating from her husband years ago saved her marriage

Ina Garten's 56-year marriage to her husband Jeffrey is stronger than ever today, but it nearly fell apart when she opened her delicatessen, Barefoot Contessa, in 1978.

The 76-year-old celebrity chef wrote in her new memoir – excerpts from which People magazine reported – that when they married in 1968, ten years earlier, Jeffrey “expected a woman to make dinner.”

“We were playing certain roles that I found really annoying,” she said. “I felt like if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”

She said she first “shook up” her “traditional roles” when she left her job at the White House, where they both worked, and bought the business in the Hamptons.

INA GARTEN WAS AFRAID THAT HER FATHER WOULD “KILL” HER AS A CHILD: “I WAS PHYSICALLY AFRAID OF HIM”

“When I was cooking, cleaning, shopping and running the store, I did it as a businesswoman, not a wife,” she wrote. “My obligations made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There was no expectation of who would come home from work first and what that person should do, because I never came home from work!”

Her husband had stayed in Washington, DC, and only came to New York on weekends, which seemed like a “distraction” to her at the time.

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

Celebrity chef Ina Garten did not start a family because she “didn’t have a childhood that I wanted to recreate.”

She said she eventually asked him for a separation because she believed it would mean the end of their marriage.

“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point I wondered if the only solution was divorce,” she wrote in her memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Comes,” which will be released October 1.

Garten said she “shattered the traditional roles” in her marriage when she quit her job at the White House, where she and her husband worked, and bought the Barefoot Contessa store in the Hamptons. (Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for the Webby Awards)

“It was the hardest thing I've ever done,” she said. “I told him I had to be on my own. I didn't say if that was now or forever. In true Jeffrey fashion, he said, 'If you feel like you have to be on your own, then you have to do it.' He packed up his things and went home to Washington, with no plans to return. I pushed my feelings aside and threw myself into my work.”

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She moved back to Washington, DC, when the Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter that year. Jeffrey met her at the train station and they sat on the front steps of their once-happy home, “reluctant to go in because we were caught between two worlds: the way it was when we were Ina and Jeffrey, and the sad one, the way it was now. A painful limbo.”

She said he asked her what he could do to save their marriage with a hope that didn't match her bleak view of their relationship.

Garten opened her store, Barefoot Contessa, in 1978. (Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

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“I just couldn't be in a traditional 'man and woman' relationship with him,” she explained. “Jeffrey hadn't done anything wrong. He was just doing what every man before him had done. But we were living in a new era and that behavior was no longer OK with me. I had changed.”

She told him that if he went to see a therapist and could understand her perspective on the relationship, it might be able to save their relationship.

“One hour, that's all Jeffrey needed,” she said, according to People. “He was there for an hour once and totally got it.”

Ina and Jeffrey Garten married in 1968. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

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She added that her husband's “willingness” to see the therapist was just as important as “anything that might happen during the session. He was so determined to convince me that he was serious about making our marriage work.”

Garten said it took time and listening to each other, but they were able to move their marriage forward as “equal” people.

“Thank God I did that,” she said of her divorce filing all those years ago. “I think about how crazy and dangerous that was, but we wouldn't have the relationship we have today if I hadn't done it.”