Ina Garten opens up about childhood, marriage and memories to Hoda Kotb

While the author had already published 13 cookbooks before her memoirs, this one is different. She's not used to being so open with the public, and when she's received comments from media and readers in the past, it's mostly been about her recipes.

“I’m used to publishing books, but it’s like fried chicken,” she says. “It's like 'Woah'.”

Growing up as a Rosenberg

While her upbringing ranged from sterile at best to terrifying at worst, she's relaxed when it comes to delving deeper into Hoda – she leans her forearm on the table with a gentle smile as she listens to the TODAY anchor speak through stories from her life.

Garten tells Hoda that her mother would do “the things she knew a mother should do” — going to museums, nourishing her children’s bodies — “but none of it was with joy or warmth or ‘I see you and I think that '”will make you feel good' – and that's what my whole world is about (now).”

She is unsure whether her mother, Florence, was capable of loving her children or forming relationships.

“And I think that scared her,” Garten says. “I can really understand how scary it is – trying to have a relationship. But as a child it was very difficult to have a mother who you couldn’t have a relationship with.”

“There were no hugs and kisses in my family,” says the author with a laugh.

Whenever she got sick, “I was in my bedroom with a bell. If I needed something…she would come, give it to me and then leave.”

“Most mothers would be happy to take care of you if you were sick,” she adds. “My mom didn’t want to be near me because she had a germ phobia and didn’t want to be in the room.”

Even little things like a scraped knee went unmentioned and worried us.

As the two talk about what a mother's love looks like for her, Hoda pauses to point out that Garten just said she wasn't sure her late mother ever loved her.

“Actually, she didn’t understand me,” Garten replies. “I’m sure of it.”

She understood that her mother probably thought it would be safer for her to “be alone and have me somewhere else.”

Safety was also a top priority for Garten as a child, but she was more concerned with physical dangers.

“My father had very strict ideas about what we should do,” she says, citing straight As and a commitment to tennis as part of his requirements. “Anything that deviated slightly from that triggered a lot of anger.” With an open hand, Garten demonstrates a hitting motion and tells Hoda that it involved physical abuse.

“I actually stayed in my room to be safe,” she says, later adding, “I think I was terrified that he was going to kill me.”

Still, Garten tells Hoda that it could have been worse. “People had a much worse childhood than I did,” she says. “I mean, I had a lot of opportunities and wonderful friends.”

Garten says she was popular in school and had no problems in the dating department.

“The house was just a scary place,” she adds, laughing again at the dichotomy.

Now her childhood friends tell her they never had any idea what was going on back then; She says the abuse never went so far as to leave bruises that required explanation.

“But they also knew that they never came to my house,” she says.

The businesswoman, best-selling author and television presenter says she is amazed that “as a child she didn't have the courage to fight back – I just tried to disappear.”

“That’s what most — I think most kids — would have done,” Hoda says confidently.

Jeffrey, her cheerleader

Meeting Jeffrey was a turning point for how Garten saw himself in the world.

“He just really enjoyed me,” she tells Hoda. “He made me feel so smart and funny and thoughtful and wonderful, and so was he.”

Garten calls the younger Jeffrey “somewhat forward-thinking” as he “always encouraged me to live my own life” and told her early in their relationship to figure out what she wanted to do.

“If you don’t do this, you won’t be happy,” she remembers him telling her. “I was just stunned because it never occurred to me that I would do anything.”

Garten says her mother thought marrying Jeffrey was a big mistake.

“My mother came into the room and said, 'I think this is a terrible idea,'” she recalls of the day her parents drove to her home at Syracuse University after receiving a call from Jeffrey they assumed they preceded a marriage proposal.

“I just pulled myself together,” she remembers, and went to her second-year living quarters. With as much love as she could muster, she said to her mother for the first time ever, “I don’t care what you think.”

Her father, on the other hand, said marrying Jeffrey was “the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” Garten says with a smile. The couple married before she graduated college when Jeffrey joined the Army.

The courage to defend herself against her mother stays with Garten well into adulthood. As Hoda points out, she was a trailblazer in her career and initially disregarded the advice of publishers who felt that including photos and fewer recipes in her first book was a big mistake.

“Who needs 250 recipes?” says Garten, talking about the standard for cookbooks at the time. “So I wrote the book I wanted to write, and (to) everyone who tried to talk me out of my game, I just said, 'I'll do that,' and if it's a bad idea, I will “They never do it. I have to see myself again anyway – it won't sell.”

A dozen bakery titles later, it's safe to say that Garten's gut instinct was right.

Between the Barefoot Contessa store, book deals, TV shows and more, Garten's career has taken turns she never expected.

“I have no idea what lies ahead and I don’t need to know,” she says of her future and what comes next.

Whatever she does, one thing remains clear: her husband.

A marriage of your own

Before they became couple goals, as Hoda points out, the Gartens had to develop their own model of marriage. It started with her interaction with children.

When they first married, Garten assumed they would have a “traditional relationship” that included children.

But in her twenties she resisted the idea. “I asked myself, 'Why would I want to recreate this nightmare I just came from?'”

She couldn't imagine how life at home with children could be different than what she had experienced. At the age of 25, after pushing these discussions further, she finally decided against having children altogether.

Today, the mother of all things fresh couldn't be happier with this choice.

“I can’t even imagine that,” she says. “I just don't know if I would have been a good parent and I love my life the way it is now and I couldn't possibly have had it if I had kids.”

As a couple, she says, “He was always the husband and I was always the wife.” However, over time, she realized that what she really wanted was a partner.

Their respective roles clashed when she bought her Barefoot Contessa grocery store in Westhampton and left her government job – and, for a time, her husband – in Washington, DC

After a brief separation and discussions about what their marriage should look like, the two were able to grow together and not separate.

“Turns out I love making dinner!” she tells Hoda. “I just didn’t want anyone to do it expect I’ll make dinner.”

The separation helped them to start over.

“We reintroduced ourselves on a different basis,” she says. “And I remember thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, I'm falling in love with someone who happens to be my husband.' It was an incredible experience.”

A beloved life

According to Garten, when her parents died, she was “so separated from them” that their deaths did not have a “huge impact” on her.

When they all died, she tells Hoda, “I didn’t really lose much.”

“I was surprised that I was sadder for my father than I expected, but my mother and I never had anything,” she says.

Garten's relationship with her father, Charles, changed drastically when she married.

“It changed his view of me,” she says, “because he saw me through Jeffrey’s eyes.”

She tells Hoda that Charles finally apologized to her at one of her book parties: “It meant everything to me.”

Hoda takes a minute to understand this. “Can we just stop and go over this for a moment?” So, your father, who has known you since you were born, saw you because a Man I have loved you.”

Garten confirms: “Isn’t that extraordinary?”

This was a significant departure from the attitude he had taken when she was young.

“I think I was about 13 and he was mad about something, I have no idea what,” she remembers. “And he said, 'No one will ever love you.'”

Immediately after those words leave her mouth, Garten smiles and explains what she calls the “big cosmic joke” of her life: “And you know what I love? I love walking down Madison Avenue and every other block someone leans over and says, 'I love you.'”

“Oops!” She says, still laughing with her trademark laugh. “I guess he was wrong.”

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