Ina Garten Reveals Why Oprah Winfrey 'Smacked' Her Twice After She Gave a Speech: 'She Was Right'

Mar. 15, 2025

Ina Garten and Oprah Winfrey.Photo:Theo Wargo/Getty, Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Theo Wargo/Getty, Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Ina Gartenis shedding light on a “shocking” moment she shared withOprah Winfreythat she still carries with her.

Radio Cherry Bombehost Kerry Diamond asked Garten, 76, about the moment — which she discloses in her upcoming memoir,Be Ready When The Luck Happens— in the latest episode of the podcast.

“It was very nice,” theBarefoot Contessastar added before diving into exchange from 2010.

That year, Garten received one of the New York Women In Communications’ Matrix Award, an annual honor awarded the organization awards to “exceptional women in the fields of advertising, books, broadcasting, film, magazines, new media, newspapers and public relations,” per its website.

While she received the honor alongsideSheryl Crow,Tina Feyand more, Garten said she found herself sitting onstage next to Winfrey, 70, who was there to introduce another honoree: longtime palGayle King.

Ina Garten receiving a Matrix Award from the New York Women In Communications in 2010.EUGENE MIM/Patrick McMullan via Getty

EUGENE MIM/Patrick McMullan via Getty

Garten and her fellow honorees were each allotted a 90-second window for their acceptance speech, which, Garten said, “is about all I can handle without having a total meltdown.”

“And I basically said I’d been really lucky in my life and I sat down,” the chef explained. “And [Winfrey] smacked me on the arm in front of like 2,000 people and said, ‘You make your own luck.’”

Unconvinced, Garten told Diamond she doubled down to Winfrey, insisting that she did owe much of her career to luck.

“I said, ‘Well, I actually had been incredibly lucky.’ And then she smacked me again,” Garten recalled with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘Okay.’”

Over a decade after Winfrey schooled her, Garten has come to see her point. “Many years later when I was writing this memoir, I thought, ‘She was kind of right.’ “I had done the work,” said Garten.

“I have to give her credit,” she added. “She was right.”

Garten has reflected on her luck so much so that it inspired the title of her memoir,Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

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Garten’s story about Winfrey is just one of many previously untold moments the chef reveals in the book — which, admittedly, she never thought she’d write in the first place.

“I just didn’t think anybody would find my life that interesting,” she told PEOPLE.

But after some convincing from a friend and collaborator, she made the leap, and it was ultimately “really fun to do,” Garten said. “I wasn’t scared at all, but the thought of sending it out in the world is a whole other story.”

Be Ready When the Luck Happensisavailablenow.

source: people.com