Martha Stewart fell in love with ex-husband Andy Stewart on their first date.
In Netflix’s new documentary Martha, the culinary icon recalls meeting Andy when she was a student at Barnard College in New York City and he was attending law school at Yale. The couple began dating after they were set up by Martha’s classmate and Andy’s sister.
“He picked me up in his little yellow Mercedes sedan,” she recalls in the film. “I had never been in a Mercedes before.”
Martha, 83, grew up one of six children in Nutley, N.J. The popular, tall blonde spent her teen years modeling to provide extra income for her parents, “Big Martha,” a school teacher, and Edward, a failed businessman.
Martha Stewart/Courtesy of Netflix
Martha remembers going out to dinner with Andy on their first date when she was 19. “He was very polite and handsome, and he had traveled a lot. It was exciting to meet a sophisticated young man. And he had an American Express card, which was a very big deal in those days,” she says.
As the pair got to know each other, Martha found Andy “intriguing, playful and nice,” and by the end of the meal she was “madly in love.” Martha says Andy began sending her money for a train ticket to visit him in New Haven, Conn. each week.
“I had never slept with anybody before this,” she says. “He was very aggressive and I liked it.”
Martha Stewart/Courtesy of Netflix
When Andy proposed, Martha says marriage seemed like “such a natural thing to do.” But her father didn’t approve of the relationship. “I went home and told my dad, and my dad slapped me,” she recalls. “And he slapped me hard on my face, and said ‘No. You’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew.’”
“I remember getting that slap,” Martha continues. “I was not at all surprised, because he was a bigot and he was impulsive.” Martha says she told her father, “I’m going to get married no matter what you think.”
She made her own wedding dress for her 1961 nuptials and welcomed daughter Alexis four years later.
“The wedding day was very happy,” she says. “Very nice. It was the beginning of my life.”
The documentary also details infidelity in their marriage, revealing that both she and Andy had affairs. Martha recalls kissing a “very handsome guy” in Florence’s Duomo on her honeymoon and a “very brief affair” with a “very attractive Irish man” while she was working as a stockbroker in the late ’60s.
Courtesy of Netflix
“It was nothing,” she insists. “I would never have broken up a marriage for it.”
Andy told producers he “didn’t stray” until she had. “I don’t know how many different girlfriends he had during this time, but I think there were quite a few,” says Martha, noting that one affair took place on the couple’s property in Westport, Conn., as she was writing cookbooks.
Martha and Andy divorced in 1990 and haven’t spoken for over 20 years.
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Martha told PEOPLE in 2020 that her divorce was tough on her.
“Getting divorced was a terrible thing for me, because we were the first to divorce in my family,” she said. “And that we haven’t spoken since the divorce is even more painful. But I’m very strong, and I’m very motivated to get on with life.”
Martha is now streaming on Netflix.
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