Ina Garten's Transformation Is Seriously Turning Heads

It's difficult to find any cooking enthusiast who doesn't love Ina Garten. Her authentic, down-to-earth style has endeared her to millions of foodies and television viewers, evidenced by the success of her cookbooks, which have become New York Times bestsellers (via The New York Times). Her television show, according to Deadline, is also a long-running favorite for Food Network fans. Even the late Anthony Bourdain, who was rather notorious for being a curmudgeon from time to time, adored her. "I love Ina Garten. She's one of the few people on Food Network who can actually cook," he said via Atlanta magazine. "In many ways I want Ina's life."

We don't blame him. Who could? After all, Ina's life does seem more than a little enviable, with her long and happy marriage to Jeffrey Garten, lunches with First Lady Michelle Obama, and all the vodka-laced Cosmopolitans one can handle.

So how did this self-taught chef go from a relatively unremarkable existence crunching numbers at the White House to cooking up a culinary empire and gathering a bevy of devoted fans? Let's take a look at how Ina Garten's decades-long transformation is turning heads.

In 1964, Country Living reports, a teenage Ina Rosenberg took a trip to Dartmouth College to visit her brother, who was a freshman at the higher education institution. She caught the attention of her future husband, Jeffrey Garten when he spotted her out the library window. He pointed her out to his roommate, who not only knew who Ina was but had already planned a date with her that night.

Once Ina went back home, Jeffrey began writing her letters. Fast forward six months later, and Jeffrey showed up at Ina's house in Stamford, Connecticut ready to take her on a date. The rest is history, right? Not quite. That first date was, as Ina described it to Food Network, "a disaster." The two drove to a bar in New York, as the legal drinking age in the state was 18 at the time. Ina was still in high school. "I had never been to a bar in my life! The guy at the door says, 'Where's your ID?' and I thought, 'What ID?'"

This early speedbump in their relationship didn't really deter the couple. They continued to date as Ina went off to Syracuse University, eventually marrying in 1968 when Ina was 20 years old.

To put it mildly, Ina Garten's success is impressive. Her accomplishments are made even more admirable by the fact that she has no formal culinary training. Instead, her expertise comes from a nearly lifelong interest in all things cooking, not to mention the help of some very good cookbooks.

Garten had already begun dabbling in cooking during her time in North Carolina, while her husband was serving as an officer in the United States Army. After Jeffrey's military service was over, Eater reports that the couple traveled to France, where they lived for four months. It was here where Garten truly fell in love with food. She shopped at the farmer's market and was entranced by the sights of locals eating outdoors. Her experiences echoed those of the legendary chef, author, and television personality Julia Child, who had also lived in France and also became devoted to cooking there.

When she returned back to the United States, Garten began teaching herself to cook by diving headfirst into Child's cookbooks. "I would have to say that Julia Child's my biggest culinary inspiration because she really taught me how to cook through her cookbooks," Garten told TODAY. "I learned how to make hollandaise sauce the right way, and then she showed me how to make it the quick way without losing any of the quality."

The year was 1978. Ina Garten was desperate to find a career that allowed her to be more creative. As luck would have it, she came across an ad in The New York Times selling a specialty food store in the Hamptons, a group of affluent communities in eastern Long Island, New York. It immediately caught Garten's attention, even though she had no professional experience in the food business. In fact, she hadn't even been to the Hamptons before (via Barefoot Contessa).

Nevertheless, the very next day she drove from Washington, D.C. to the east end of Long Island to see the store. She immediately fell in love with the boutique shop but was on the fence as to whether or not she should really go through with buying it. Although her parents were shocked to hear that she'd give up her White House job, Garten's husband fully supported her decision to try to buy the store."Jeffrey said, 'If you love it, you'll be really good at it,'" Garten recalled via Insider. "And that's the best advice anybody ever gave me."

Garten gave a low offer for the store, thinking it would provide her time to mull over the decision. As fate would have it, the owners accepted the next day and Ina moved ahead with the deal. Just like that, Garten was the new owner of a food shop. The name of the store? Barefoot Contessa, of course.

If there's one thing you can say about Ina Garten, it's that she is always up for a new challenge. In fact, she lives for it, as the success of her store soon showed others. Garten had built Barefoot Contessa into a hugely successful business. It became so busy that, in 1985, she moved the store from its original 400-square-foot building in Westhampton to a new 3,000-square-foot store in East Hampton (via Eater). But, after nearly two decades of running her popular shop, Garten was looking to do something new. "I like a nice project that I can chew on," she told Eater. "And so the store was that, and then after twenty years, it was time to do something else."

In 1996, Garten sold the store to two of her employees: the store manager and chef. Now she needed to find something to do. While she worked on charting a new course, Garten built an office above Barefoot Contessa and began writing a cookbook. This would prove to be an ingenious and fateful decision. Filled with recipes she perfected over the years at her store, Garten published The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook in 1999. The volume quickly became a best seller and led her to publish two more cookbooks within the next four years. She's since put out some seriously good cooking tips for home cooks.

Everybody loves someone who can cook, so it should come as no surprise that Ina Garten is so popular. Still, the list of famous friends she's accumulated over the years is pretty impressive even for a culinary powerhouse like Garten. 

But her friendships go beyond the television screen. Take her relationship with Taylor Swift for example. As per People, the two were introduced through a mutual friend and, before you know it, Swift was in Garten's East Hampton, New York home for a personal cooking lesson. It was the singer, in fact, who wrote Garten's commendation when the chef was included in Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. "She's incredibly busy and incredibly in-demand, that she'd take the time to write about me, it meant that she thought that we had a special relationship, which I feel we do," Garten told People.

Then there's Jennifer Garner. The A-list actress has been an admirer of Garten's for years and their friendship has been blossoming. Garner has visited the Garten's home, had one of her own recipes featured on a Barefoot Contessa holiday special, and even shared some In-N-Out burgers with the chef, according to W magazine.

Other famous faces Garten can call friends includes Tina Fey, who name-dropped the chef in an episode of "30 Rock," and Katie Couric, who's been known to share a Cosmopolitan or two with Garten.