“Jeffrey makes coffee,” she told PEOPLE in 2011. After he was sent on an Army deployment to Thailand for a year shortly after they were married, “I wrote to Ina every single day,” he says. I love to cook for him. She even spoiled him back then: “When I was 16 and Jeffrey was 18, I used to make him brownies and send them in a big box to school.

That’s who Jeffrey is,'” she says. “I was recently reading through them, and I came across one that said, ‘I’d love to take you to Paris, and we won’t have enough money for a hotel, but maybe we’ll go camping,'” Ina says with a laugh. You'll get the latest updates on this topic in your browser notifications. He doesn’t have to do anything and that’s my pleasure.”It’s also hard to find something that Jeffrey doesn’t like (though we do recall he wasn’t a big fan of traditional birthday cakes). This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. She added that he spends four hours driving back and forth from Yale and East Hampton, where the couple lives, twice a week — so she likes to cook and take care of him. 4. 9. Ina's account has 1.4 million followers, but Jeffrey's has less than 1,500. “We don’t have any children. He’s a bad judge because he likes everything. '”, Throughout the distance and changes of address, their unconditional support has remained constant. He met Ina when she was 15. The Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten is one of the most celebrated personalities in food today. You'll get the latest updates on this topic in your browser notifications. 6. But in an interview with the Yale Daily News, he confessed: “There was once a fish stew that didn’t turn out quite right.”. “As somebody [once] said, smart men need coffee so they all know how to make coffee. “Every year for many years we had that conversation. According to his obituary in the Village Voice, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, five Purple Hearts, the Legion of Merit, two Joint Commendation Medals, and two Air Medals. Credit: Get push notifications with news, features and more. Ina, 70, spends most of her days at their home in East Hampton, N.Y., testing recipes for her show or upcoming cookbook (her latest, Cook Like a Pro, hits shelves on Oct. 23), while Jeffrey, 71, a professor at the Yale School of Management, commutes from Connecticut and acts as her eager taste tester when he’s at home. She also acquired her pilot's certificate. Ina and Jeffrey in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Thank you for all the beautiful birthday wishes. She began to dabble in cooking and entertaining in an effort to occupy her time; Jeffrey served a four-year military tour during the Vietnam War. Before his time spent as an advisor to the Royal Thai Army, Jeffrey studied at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, where he learned to speak Thai. You probably know Jeffrey Garten as Ina's husband — the guy who's perpetually on-call for a quick Barefoot Contessa cameo. “But in reality he’s extremely smart, and has very interesting ideas on the world and the economy,” she adds. RELATED: Get the First Recipe from Ina Garten’s New Cookbook, Cook Like a Pro. He was later stationed in a remote town on the Thailand/Burma border. She’s still grateful for his business insight, telling Radio Cherry Bombe in 2014, “The best mentor I’ve ever had is Jeffrey.”, 8.