Ina Garten has never looked back at the life she and Jeffrey Garten built together and wished they had made a different decision about children.
At 78, the Barefoot Contessa star told The New York Times that becoming parents would have changed both her career and her marriage. “I think it would have been difficult, and I think Jeffrey and I would have had a different life together,” she said.
Jeffrey once moved to Japan to start a business while Garten stayed in East Hampton, and the two traveled back and forth. At the same time, she was putting long hours into the Barefoot Contessa specialty-food store and its catering operation.
She said she understands why friends love raising families, but motherhood was never something she wanted for herself. “I’ve never looked back on the decision and thought, I should have done it differently,” she said. “I’m really happy that I didn’t.”
Garten Says Children Would Have Made Their Life ‘Much Harder’
Garten’s answer centered less on what she believes she gave up and more on what the couple was able to do because their lives remained flexible. Jeffrey could pursue the opportunity in Japan while she continued running her business in the Hamptons, even though that meant living apart and traveling to see each other.
She believes that arrangement probably would not have been realistic with children. The same was true of the hours she devoted to Barefoot Contessa, where running the store was only part of the workload. Garten told the Times that catering could keep her working late into the night in addition to the demands of the specialty-food business.
Her Childhood Shaped a Decision She Made Very Young
Garten has been more explicit about the emotional side of that decision in previous interviews. During a 2024 appearance on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Wiser Than Me podcast, she said the choice “wasn’t a struggle at all” because she had “no interest in having children.”
“I just had a terrible childhood, and it was nothing I wanted to recreate,” she said during the Lemonada Media interview. She added that she can now look at friends with their children and understand what parenthood could have offered, but that was not how she felt when she was 20.
The new Times interview returned to the same childhood from another direction. Garten described growing up lonely, with a disconnected mother and a father she remembers as controlling and frequently angry with her. She said it took years, including therapy as an adult, to understand that the home she grew up in did not have to determine the rest of her life.
Jeffrey ‘Would Have Really Loved Having Children’
Garten has also said the decision was more definitively hers than Jeffrey’s. On Wiser Than Me, she said she believed her husband “would have been a great parent” and “would have really loved having children.” What mattered was that he did not try to persuade her into a life she did not want.
She revisited the subject on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang in November 2025, saying she was grateful that Jeffrey accepted the decision she made so young. “I just can’t imagine my life any other way,” she said, adding that she had been able to do what she wanted and had “just a wonderful time.”
Poehler also asked Garten for the best part of not having children. Garten’s answer was considerably less philosophical: not being responsible for them and, specifically, “not having teenagers.”
The Gartens Are Still Building Separate Projects After 57 Years of Marriage
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Ina and Jeffrey married in December 1968 and celebrated their 57th anniversary last year. Garten marked it with a collection of throwback photos on Instagram, writing affectionately about marrying someone she considered smart, funny and adorable.
The freedom to pursue different interests has remained part of their relationship. Jeffrey built a career spanning government, business and academia, while Garten left her government job, bought Barefoot Contessa in 1978 and eventually moved from the store into cookbooks and television.
She is adding another project this fall. Happy Hour With Ina Garten, a weekly video podcast filmed in her New York City apartment, premieres Sept. 16 through Vox Media and her new official YouTube channel. The show will put Garten across the table from guests from food, culture, entertainment, sports and the arts, this time with cocktails and conversation instead of a cooking demonstration.