Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty
Ina Gartenand Jeffrey Garten’s relationship got off on the wrong foot.
Ina — who is promoting her new cookbook,Go-To Dinners— recounted how she was 16 and in high school at the time, whileJeffrey, now 76, was attending Dartmouth. “We had a mutual friend and he’d seen me walking around the campus of Dartmouth and he asked the friend could he call me,” she said.
“So, he called, and I just knew he was a friend of the friend and I thought, ‘Well, he’s a Dartmouth guy so he probably wants to like go to a bar or something,’ I had never been to a bar and so I said, ‘Oh let’s just go this bar Hilltop,’ like I’d been there many times,” she continued.
Ina shared that she was able to remain “totally cool” about the situation. That is, until the now-couple had to gain entry inside.
“We parked there and walked in and there are two big guys at the door and I said, ‘What was that?’ I didn’t understand what they were saying,” she said. “Finally, Jeffrey said ‘they want your ID’ and I said to him, ‘What’s that?’
Through chuckles, Ina confessed, “I had no idea that I needed a fake ID to get into a bar when I was sixteen.”
Their first date did have a happy ending, though. Ina revealed that Jeffrey made the first move that night and they shared their first kiss “in front of my house, in the car when I thought he was never gonna see again on that first date.”
Ash Bean/The Drew Barrymore Show
Ina and Jeffrey spoke about their initial meeting when, “many years later I said, ‘What did you think, like why did you want to take me out again?'” Ina recalled to Barrymore. Jeffrey responded: “I thought you needed taking care of.”
Ina and Jeffrey will celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary this December. The two continue to share romantic evenings, likesunset cruises,weeknight dinnersand eventhe occasional spicy text.
The Drew Barrymore Showairs weekdays on CBS. Check local listings.
source: people.com
