Ina Garten says asking for separation from her husband saved her marriage: 'Thank God I did'

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Ina Garten’s 56-year marriage to husband Jeffrey is stronger than ever now, but it nearly fell apart when she opened her Barefoot Contessa specialty food store in 1978. The 76-year-old celebrity chef said in her new memoir — excerpted by People magazine — that when they got married ten years earlier, in 1968, Jeffrey "expected a wife that would make dinner.

" "There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying," she said. "I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention." She said that she first "shattered" their "traditional roles" when she quit her job at the White House where they had both worked and bought the shop in the Hamptons.

INA GARTEN FEARED HER FATHER WOULD ‘KILL’ HER AS A CHILD: ‘I WAS PHYSICALLY AFRAID OF HIM’ Ina Garten’s 56-year marriage to husband Jeffrey is stronger than ever now, but it nearly fell apart when she opened her Barefoot Contessa specialty food store in 1978. (Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images) "While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife," she wrote. "My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else.

There was no expectation about who got home from work first and what they should do, because I never got home from work!" Her husband had remained in Washington, D.C., and only came to New York on weekends, which she said at t.