Ina Rosenberg Garten is an American author, the host of the Food Network show Barefoot Contessa, and a former White House Office of Management and Budget staff member. Eli Zabar (owner of Eli’s Manhattan and Eli’s Breads), Anna Pump, and food connoisseur Martha Stewart were her primary mentors. Heart à la crème, celery root remoulade, pear clafouti, and a simplified version of beef bourguignon are among her dishes. Her culinary career began with her gourmet food store, Barefoot Contessa, and has since expanded to include several best-selling cookbooks, magazine columns, self-branded convenience products, and a popular Food Network television show.
Quick Info
| Net Worth: | $60 Million |
| Date of Birth: | Feb 2, 1948 (74 years old) |
| Gender: | Female |
| Height: | 5 ft 2 in (1.6 m) |
| Profession: | Chef, Author, Presenter, Actor |
| Nationality: | United States of America |
Early Life
Ina Rosenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 2, 1948. Ina was one of two children born to surgeon Charles H. Rosenberg and dietitian Florence Rosenberg in Stamford, Connecticut. She was encouraged to excel in school from an early age and demonstrated a strong aptitude for science, which she says she still uses when experimenting with recipes. She met her future husband Jeffrey Garten when she was 15 years old while visiting her brother at Dartmouth College. She intended to attend Syracuse University after graduating from high school, but she delayed her studies to marry Jeffrey in 1968.
What is Ina Garten’s Net Worth?
Ina Garten has a net worth of $120 million as an American television personality and author. That is her combined net worth with her long-term husband, investment banker Jeffrey Garten. She is best known as the host of the Food Network’s Emmy Award-winning Barefoot Contessa franchise. Garten was previously a White House nuclear policy analyst.
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Early Career
The couple soon relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Ina began to dabble in cooking and entertaining to keep herself busy while Jeffrey served a four-year military tour in Vietnam. During this time, Ina earned her pilot’s licence. After Jeffrey’s military service ended, the couple went on a four-month camping trip in France, which sparked her interest in French cuisine, open-air markets, and produce stands. When they returned to the United States in 1972, they settled in Washington, D.C., where dinner parties became a weekly ritual.
Garten worked at the White House while studying for an MBA at George Washington University. She began her career as a government aide and worked her way up to the position of budget analyst, which required her to write the nuclear energy budget and policy papers for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. During this time, Garten began flipping houses for profit, and the proceeds enabled her to make her first major purchase, The Barefoot Contessa Speciality Store.
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Barefoot Contessa Store
When she saw an advertisement in the New York Times for a specialty food store for sale in the Hamptons, she decided to look into it. She drove to Long Island with her husband Jeffrey to see the store and fell in love with it. Garten had no prior experience in the food industry but knew it was exactly what she wanted to do. She made an offer to the owner, and the owner called the next day to accept Garten’s offer. She resigned from her government job in 1978, and the couple relocated to New York City after buying the 400-square-foot store.
The store’s original owner named it after the 1954 film starring Ava Gardner. When Garten took over, she kept the name because it fit her concept of an “elegant but earthy lifestyle.” Garten moved the Barefoot Contessa across Main Street to a larger property within a year, which it quickly outgrew. They moved back to the prosperous Long Island village of East Hampton in 1985.
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The store tripled in size and specialised in local delicacies like lobster Cobb salad, locally made cheeses, and locally grown produce. Garten did most of the cooking herself, but as the business grew, she hired local chefs and bakers. Celebrity clients such as Steven Speilberg and Lauren Bacall praised her.
She sold the store to two employees, Amy Forst and Parker Hodges, in 1996, who carried on the traditions Garten established. The store closed permanently in 2004 due to a failed lease negotiation.
Personal Life and Real Estate
Jeffrey Garten, Ina’s husband, was the dean of the Yale School of Management from 1995 to 2005. On her cooking show, he is frequently seen assisting with tasks or sampling dishes she has created. The family spends time in Manhattan, East Hampton, and Paris. In 2016, she paid $4.6 million for their Upper East Side NYC apartment. Her East Hampton home is worth at least $10 million and sits on a nearly 40,000 square-foot lot.
Garten is a registered Democrat who has contributed to Bill Clinton’s, John Kerry’s, George H. W. Bush’s, and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. She hosted the 16th Annual Hudson Peconic Benefit for Planned Parenthood. Garten is a member of East Hampton’s Design Review Board, which oversees building permits and approves various architectural and design elements of the village in order to project the historical district.
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