Ina Garten never saw the need to compare herself to Martha Stewart — despite what everyone around her said.
“[I learned] to just trust your vision,” Garten, 76, said during a Tuesday, December 24, podcast appearance. “I think the thing that works is if you’re really true to who you are. If you believe in it so fiercely, somebody out there is going to believe in it too.”
She added, “It’s true. It’s not, ‘I’m going to become this perky person … that people will just love.’ Just put out who you are and do the best job you possibly can do and I think people will trust that. They honor that and they believe in that.”
Garten says she sees her life like a train ride.
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“People are trying to pull me off the train and I just keep it right on the tracks,” she explained. “If I feel, like, I’m so sure what I’m doing is right, I don’t let people pull me off my game.”
The two lifestyle gurus first crossed paths in the early 1990s when Stewart, now 83, went shopping at Garten’s now-closed Barefoot Contessa shop in East Hampton, New York.
“My desk was right in front of the cheese case and we just ended up in a conversation,” Garten previously told TIME in a 2017 interview. “We ended up actually doing benefits together where it was at her house and I was the caterer, and we became friends after that.”
One day, Stewart brought a publisher to the Barefoot Contessa outpost that helped secure Garten’s first cookbook deal. They have each since published numerous recipe compilations and helmed respective culinary shows.
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Nearly two decades later, it was reported that Stewart and Garten were on the outs. Stewart had claimed to The New Yorker in September that Garten “stopped talking to me” after she went to prison. (Stewart was found guilty on felony charges of conspiracy to obstruct and of making false statements to federal investigators. She was sentenced to five months in prison and was released from jail in March 2005.)
Garten, however, has denied that the alleged falling-out was a result of Stewart’s prison stint.
“Well, let’s just say her story isn’t exactly accurate,” Garten said earlier this month during a book event, supporting her recently released memoir. “You know, that was 25 years ago. I think it’s time to let it go.”
Garten further noted on Tuesday that she surrounds herself “with really creative, smart people” to help make the best decisions for her own career.
“What I tend to do is I talk to everybody in the beginning and I get everybody’s point of view,” Garten explained. “I hear and we talk and we, kind of, build something. But, at the end of the day, it’s my job to choose and once I get all the information … I know exactly what the right thing to do is.”
