Martha Talks

This week, Martha flips the script. Instead of asking the questions, she is the one fielding them. The fashion maven Fern Mallis, who created New York Fashion Week, interviewed Martha at 92nd Street Y in New York for “Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis.”

Martha gets candid with Fern about family memories, her marriage, the parties that launched her career, her friend Snoop, posing for Sports Illustrated - and more. You’ll hear a side of Martha you haven’t heard before. Listen to their entertaining and revealing conversation here.  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Last week, I was interviewed by Ferne Malice at the
ninety second Street Why for her long running speaker series,
Fashion Icons with Berne Malice. Berne has interviewed Oscar de
la Rena, by anevan Christenberg, really everyone in and around
the fashion world. We had a candid conversation about my childhood,
my marriage, my career, my friend Snoop, the Sports Illustrated

(00:28):
Swimsuit issue, and lots more. I'm posting it here on
the Martha Stewart Podcast. I know you'll enjoy hearing it.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you all for being here. Good evening. It's great
to see so many of you here as this has
been a remarkable and very special season for fashion Icons
here at the ninety two and Why. Those of you
who have been coming through the years know I always
have a special introduction with anecdotes and info my guests
will surprise him or her.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Tonight, I'm going to be joined by the busiest working
woman on this planet. She has done it all and
still has more to create and brand and sell. And hell,
it's Martha's Dowart. We all know who she is, and
I don't want to waste one more minute at the
podium talking about her when I can have her on
the stage talking with her. So now is the time

(01:24):
to cancel your dinner reservations, as we've got a lot
of years and stories to cover. Ladies and gentlemen and
everyone else. Let's give a warm and appreciative welcome to
my friend, the one and only Martha's do it?

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Thank you, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Hi?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Oh? Thank you, Fern, We thank you. Very exciting. I
read your bio over today and I found out we
have something very much in common. We were brought up
in Buffalo.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
To school in Buffalo. Oh, the University of Buffalo.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, so my maternal my maternal family, my mother's family
all worked and lived in Buffalo.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
And I know that that's where you learned canning and
doing preservation.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh so you know you did your homework. But my
brother went to the University of Buffalo. He taught their
dentistry and he's retired now, but he still lives in Buffalo,
and I love that city.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Okay, So let's start at the very beginning. You were
born on August third, nineteen forty one, in Jersey City,
New Jersey. Makes you how old?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
How old?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Am I don't know? You have to do this subtraction.
I'm old. I'm eighty two, and Fern is not as
old as I am. She was born in nineteen forty eight.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
So you and Tom Ford the only ones who called
me out on my birthday on this stage. You're LEO.
I think you believe in the stars. I do LEO
positive traits loyal, wise, confident, a natural leader and generous.
Some negative traits opinionated, attention seeking, arrogant and stubborn.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Wow, do you agree with any of us? They go
well together, okay?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
And some LEO celebrities for whatever it's worth, and they
hold up well, Yes, you hold up well. Jennifer Lopez, Madonna,
President Obama and Whitney Houston Company.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yep, and mister Brady and oh, there's a lot of
people who are on my birthday too, Carly close.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
So tell us about your parents.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Edward Costra Castayra and Martha Martha Roskowsky.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Is it a Polish thing to name daughters after their mothers.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
I don't know why. My father wanted his first daughter
to be named Martha, after his beloved wife. And they
met at guess where in Buffalo. My father was taking
up Polish language course he's both parents' children of Polish
immigrants who came by My maternal family and my paternal
family all came from Poland, some from Levuff and some

(04:13):
from Krakau, and they came in the early part of
the twentieth century on by boat went through Roosevelt not
Roosevelt Island. They went through Ellis Island, and they went
through Ellis Island, and they changed their They actually didn't
change their name at the time. Some of their children
have changed their names. My father refused to change Casteira.

(04:35):
It's really Costeira. And he did all the research at
the New York Public Library. He took me there weekend
after weekend to do genealogical research. He should have started
an ancestry dot com. But he found out that we
were actually from the Isle of Coos, which is in Greece.
So I also think I'm Greek, and then I guess
they must have been mercenaries going up to Poland. And

(04:57):
my mother's family settled in Buffalo, New York. My grandfather
was celebrated on his ninety ninth birthday as the longest
living member of the Iron Workers Union in Buffalo. He
was a decorative iron worker He did all the balustrades
and altars in Buffalo and those big churches. And he
had hands who never wanted to shake Grandpa's hand because

(05:19):
he would break your little hand. No, he's so strong.
He had the anvil all the time in his hand.
But he very artistic and a lovely, lovely man. And
he lived on ninety nine. He was an amazing.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
They had a very positive influence on your upbringing.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Oh very much. So. I would spend a month a
summer every year in Buffalo. I took the railroad by
myself with a sandwich up to Buffalo, just one sandwich,
the one sandwich, and I must have had a little
cup of milk or something. But my mom took care
of that and got on the train in Newark, New Jersey,
and ended up in Buffalo.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, you have five siblings, yes, how do you fit in?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I was second oldest, my brother Eric with the one
who went to University of Buffalo. I then my brother Frank,
who lives down in Alabama, and then my sister Kathy,
who lives sometimes in Austin and sometimes in Greenwich. And
then my two youngest siblings unfortunately died not long ago.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
You're still close with all the ones that. Oh yeah, okay,
you've said in some interview that I read that you
were the favorite child of my father. How was that shown?

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Well, I guess I paid the most attention to him.
Dad was Dad was if you know the play Death
of a Salesman. My father was Willie Lowman and a
sort of a disappointed uh not. I mean, I can't
say my father was unsuccessful. He raised amazing children, so

(06:47):
that is a great success for anybody. But he was
always a kind of like deprecating, and but also he
was he was the Eagle Scout counselor and he would
sit on the stage, bear chested, with a great big
Native American interest on and he would show off like that,
and then he would go back to selling pharmaceuticals. He
started out selling Shaefer beer. You know, he was a salesman.

(07:10):
He was, but he felt like he had never made it.
And I always felt very bad about that. And I
was very close to him, and he was the one
who really educated me in literature. When I read the
when I read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, he had
to and I was like eleven years old. He had
to explain to me with a scarlet lettermant. Very educated man,

(07:30):
very well read. He played the violin by ear. He
would walk around the house shirtless, playing the violin all
the time. He was always shirtless. I don't know why.
He was like six two and a half, blonde, curly hair,
blue eyes, and very handsome and wore beautiful clothes. And
that was Dad.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
He sounds fabulous. Okay, your mother taught you how to
cook and sew. What was her.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Favorite dish that she taught you, Oh, PIROGI And I
still make her pirogy it's going to be. That's one
of the recipes in my hundredth book. Yep, my hundred
favorite recipes. But I stood by your side. I was
like the student of the family, the serious student. And
you know, my brother, older brother was the hunter, the trapper.

(08:14):
He would bring home the muskrats that he sold the
skins to Sears Roebuck and you got like fifteen dollars
of skin. So those muskrats were coming in during the
February and March months when the muskrats were out breeding,
I guess, and I had to do the skinning because
I was the neatest, and you'd hang them up in
the sink in the basement, over these old soapstone sinks.
And I had a scalpel, and I was like a surgeon,

(08:36):
so I could get them with no holes in them.
That you get more money if you didn't have a
hole in the muskrat skin. But he was also a
hunter and a fisherman, so I tied all the flies.
So if the people in the audience any men are
who are trout fishermen, I tie the best flies, not
those flies, the little flies.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
All of this makes perfect sense given how you're life
and career evolved. Even at that age you were doing
oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Entrepreneurial yep, baking. Mom was a great baker, but she
always asked me for my vinagrette recipe because I made
the best vinaigrette in the family, and they still ask
me for it.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Are you going to share that with that?

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I've shared it up a million times and they still
don't know how to make it.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Do you all know a vinegrete recipe?

Speaker 1 (09:23):
All right, we don't have to get it'll be in
the hundredth book.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Describe one of your first jobs at ten years old.
You were babysitting for some very famous people's children. Mickey
Mantle and Yogi Berra.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Oh yeah, all the Yankees hired the girls from Nottley
High School to come to like Englewood and around there
the George Washington Bridge to babysit for their because we
were known as the reliable ones. And of course, what
the heck? I never got a baseball I never got
a baseball card, nothing from these guys. And the only
one who remembered me sort of, his wife remembered me

(09:57):
very well was Yogi Berra, and so I was babysit
for his children too, And up until a couple of
years ago, I was still seeing Yogi Berra at Yankee Stadium,
as I still love those stupid Yankees.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Okay, we'll pass on.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
And I did the first pitch to I think two
or three years ago. Yes, yeah, I didn't quite make
it to home plate, but it was right right in
front of home plate, which when you watch all the
other silly first pitches, I mean most of them, I
don't even get even ten feet within the homeplate, and
most of them go off like the third base or
their first base. I got it straight, and I practiced.

(10:33):
I practiced.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
And you also organize their birthday parties.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Oh yes, we did a lot of birthday parties. Yes,
that was That was the beginning I was. I was
organizing birthday parties from the time I was maybe eight
years old, seven or eight years old. I was very
good at organizing and entertaining.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Okay, it's fifteen though, you started modeling. How did that
come about?

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Well, a neighbor across the street, this beautiful ballerina girl
across the street, and she said, you know, I make
a lot of money on weekends modeling. And she was
in ballet school at American Belly School in New York,
and she said, why don't you come with me to
my agent. They'd like you. So I went on the
bus with her, the number thirteen bus, and we went
to Eileen Ford and I signed up with Eileen Ford

(11:18):
for a short, short stint. It was, you know, for me,
kind of frightening but fun. And then Barbara Stone saw me.
She was at Stuart Models, and she said, oh, you
must come here, and she and her partners liked me
a lot and got me really great jobs. And I
really paid for my way through college with the residuals

(11:39):
from all the commercials I did. So like at sixteen,
I was, oh, I did Tarrygent. I had to learn
how to puff. I've never smoked, but I learned how
to puff very sexy cigarette Tarrytan with the Black Eye.
And I did Life Voice soap. I was a married woman.
I was sixteen years old and I was a married
woman in the commercial. It was very and we photographed

(12:02):
it out at Perry Como's house in Shelter Island. Even
had a house out on Schulter Island or something that's
so they said it was his house. And I remember
these days so clearly because it really was kind of
an important step in my life because I learned how
to behave in front of a camera and I've been
doing that ever since that I don't feel self conscious,
I don't feel angst, nothing, nothing that people talk about.

(12:23):
It was kind of fun and I also learned, you know,
what angles and what looks good, what kind of smile,
all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
So you were you were doing a lot of this
modeling while you were at Nutley High School. Were the
other students jealous? Did that create any issue?

Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't. I don't think they were jealous. But they
all watched gun Smoke ause my commercials were running on
gun Smoke. And that was the number one program at
the time, and everybody would be glued on Tuesday nights
to gun smoke and they would laugh laugh at me
the next day at school. But like I was the
only girl in the in the trigonometry class, and I
would you know, it was It was an odd, odd

(12:59):
time and I was just finding my way. I was
a good student, very good student. But I and I
loved my school. I love Notutley High School, and yeah,
I just loved it. And I used to have the
whole football team come over for breakfast. You know. My
mother was very My mother was very kind to whoever

(13:21):
I brought home. We would bring the teachers home. My
parents were both teachers, so they appreciated us liking the teachers.
And my mother always said, the teacher is always right.
And I still feel that way, and I get so
depressed when I see how maligned so many teachers are
these days.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
And my last guest on this stage also said that
your parents are always right.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
I ask my daughter, Then.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You attended Barnard College of Columbia University and apparently turned
down a scholarship ten.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yu, I did. I applied. I wanted to go to
Stamford in California. I had never been to California. I
had read about it, and I really wanted to go there.
And I applied and I got a scholarship. I don't
even remember now if I got accepted. I don't think
I did really good. I don't think I really finished

(14:16):
the application. But I got a full scholarship at NYU
and a partial scholarship to Barnard. But I went up
and looked around Barnard and saw it's proximity to Colombia.
It was such a nice place, and Barnard was very amenable,
and the president was so great, and so I went
there and I I major majored in history, economics, and

(14:41):
architectural history with a lot of miners. I mean, I
took as many courses as it could possibly take.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
And at that stage studying those things, what was your
plan or dream that you thought you would do when
you graduate.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Well, early on, I didn't know. I was just so
interested in learning as much as I could about as
many subjects as I could, taking art classes with a
great professor, whichcover over. At Columbia, classes were totally open.
You could go to any class at Columbia and you
could go to graduate school classes. You could do anything.
And my favorite place to study was in the architecture
Library Avery. It was such a beautiful little library and

(15:17):
I studied there all the time. I don't I didn't
really think so much about what the career would be.
I started a toy with the idea of being an architect,
and because I'm always studying in this architecture library.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
But to make money during college, you also models for Chanel.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
I went to Paris that my agency sent me to
Paris for a stint, just a Stewart agency. Yeah, in
the summertime, and it was it was so odd because
I didn't know what to expect. I was studying French,
so I could speak a little bit of French. They
put me in the Rue de Journal in the Hotel
Scundena V. I still remember my room up on the

(15:52):
fifth floor and walk up and I had so much fun.
But I got in a line because like one of
my dresses that I wore to a go see was wrinkled,
and they called New York and said she came in
a wrinkled dress. And I never did that again. But
I did model in some of the shows and I
had I had really fun, and they had parties every

(16:15):
single night, and then you would work after the parties
because all the collections were available only at nighttime because
they were on the runways during the day. So I
was doing the photography part. So you start to work
at two o'clock in the morning. It was it was weird.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
So that was your first trip to Paris. Yes, memorable. Yes,
you were also on the cover of Glimbor magazine and
the ten Best Dressed in College issue in August nineteen
sixty one.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, and that was a college I was dressing myself
in homemade fashion. Do you remember Shaney. No, it was
a it was a high fashion house right on like
fifty ninth Street off of Park Avenue. A friend's mother
who was pardon.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Bill Cunningham, worked with.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh she did, didn't know that. Oh, anyway, they would
buy patterns in Paris, so though they were buying Chanel
and Bent Valenciaga and different patterns lon Van and they
would bring the patterns home and then make and the
fabrics and they would make them for their clients here
in New York. And so I got the patterns and
so I would be cutting, you know, beautiful dresses. I

(17:21):
still have a beautiful chanel jacket that I made in
my in my attic and my archive. And I still
have one of the beautiful dresses that I made from
a Lonvan dress which hide with wist. It was very nice,
complicated and beautiful.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
What did you remember what you wore on the cover
in the Glamour shoot? No, a hat?

Speaker 1 (17:39):
I think I had a hat, something pinkish, h okay.
So also it's in the archive.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Her archive is where we all want to be, okay.
So while in college you also met Andrew Stewart.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Oh I did. First. Let me see, the middle of
the first year. His sister, who was a fashion icon
the time, married to Stanley Love, the children's dress manufacturers.
You remember Love dresses. They were always had the backpage
ad of the New York Times magazine and little cute
little girl's dresses. And she would be driven every day

(18:15):
to school in a Rolls Royce that had a cab
in the front for the driver, and she would sit
in the back and she was very like, very pitchy toitchy,
and I thought, God, this is she must be interesting.
I'm going to have to talk to her. And she
was in a couple of my art classes, art history classes,
and she came up to me one day and said,
would I'd like to have a date with her brother,
who was at Yale Law School, And I said, yeah, sure.

(18:37):
She showed me a picture and he looked okay, and
I said sure, have him call me. And about three
months later he called and we had a first date
in New York, went to a restaurant like a Japanese
early Japanese restaurant, like on fifty sixth Street on the
East Side, and fell in love. And I I had

(19:00):
never really dated anybody, seriously, I had never slept with
anybody either, and we did all that, and it was
a lot of first and we got out of love
at first sight. And my father got very upset with
me for beinging, you know, saying I was going to
get married. We got married when I was nineteen nineteen, Yeah, nineteen.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
So how many how long did you know him before
you got married?

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Not not even a year?

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Not even a year?

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, but it's the true.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
You kept him waiting at the altar at Saint Paul's Well.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
We had a lot of tribes coming from Nottley, New
Jersey to Saint Paul's travel and it took a little
longer than my father anticipated, and we had to find
a parking spot, you know, and whole thing. And we
had a very small wedding which I paid for with
my modeling earnings, even.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Though he's from this family.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
With bo yes, but you don't those days. The bride
paid for the wedding and the bride paid for the reception,
which was at the Barbary Room in the Berkshire Hotel.
And I had never I had never had a luncheon
and it was a lunch, and never had a fancy
lunch and any New York establishment. So I did all
the planning and they were very nice to us.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
And what was your wedding dress?

Speaker 1 (20:08):
A homemade My mom and I made it. It was
white Swiss embroidered organdy, a short, very bouffont skirt with
a tiny and my waist at that time I was
nineteen and my waist was nineteen. I still have the dress.
I can prove it. It fit me and a tiny
little buttons like thirty five little organdy, you know, covered

(20:29):
buttons down the back, very pretty big sleeves with little
tiny wrists, and a little pill box hat because at
that time pillboxes were big and I had my hair
and upd with a thousand hairpins. I hated that hairdresser
because then you had to take all the pins out
while you're on your owage to the honeymoon, you know,

(20:49):
and that was kind of painful. And where did your
honeymoon in Vermont? We drove a little yellow Mercedes Sedan.
I brought my husband's car up to Vermont and stayed
in little inns or some places on the way. It
was nice.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
He was scoping at property for later in life. Yeah, okay,
So nineteen sixty five it was an important year. You
gave birth to Alexis Stewart, Yes, who is now fifty
eight years old.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, she just turned fifty eight, can you believe it?
And she has two of the most fabulous children, eleven
and twelve.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Jude and Truman. Yeah, are you close to them?

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Well, Jude just sent me an agenda for the weekend.
This girl is twelve. She just started at a new school.
They were at Avenue School downtown, where they became fluent
in Mandarin. They're also fluent in Spanish and they are
she's a dancer at Alvin Ailey and he's a soccer player.
But she sent me an agenda. Could I please bring
six friends? A five friends. They're going to be six

(21:50):
of them on Sunday morning, pick up at eight o'clock
in the city. And then a list It's a page long,
this long list of pick apples, make apple cier, make
apple sauce, make apple pies and tarts to take home.
And then there is horseback riding, two days, sandwiches, picnic outdoors,
sleeping in Woodland Cottage which has nobody's ever slept in

(22:11):
the Woodland Cottage. It's the most remote building on my property.
And they want to sleep out theres and it's very
cute and we're going to take pictures.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
But I wonder where she got that from. That was.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
But you know, I had to set up the whole
cooking school that I mean, this was my Columbus Day weekend.
I used to go to Maine on Columbus Day and
take my friends. Now I'm entertaining apple six twelve year
olds and I haven't even met three of them. Three
of them I haven't met yet. And their mother's called
to find out where they're going to be safe and
where they everything was going to be okay.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think they know they'd be saying, but.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I don't know if they know who I am. I know,
you know, Judea is very they're very private, these kids.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, and your daughter has said in some print while
back that she grew up with a glue gun pointed
at her head.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
I must tell you that she is an amazing designer.
She makes all of her jewelry, and she makes Jude's
jewelry now and so yeah, so what she learned how
to do.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
And she's also said, which I find hard to believe,
that you hate Halloween and would turn off all the
lights so no one will come trick or treating.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Well, that was only when I was not happy, you know.
And you know, some Halloweens, I'm happy, and some Halloweens
I'm not happy. Just look online at Martha Stewart Halloween
costumes and you will see the most extraordinary lineup of
Halloween costumes. I have the best Halloween costumes of anybody
on earth. And so Alexis was not paying attention those years.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, so this one, you're gonna have the lights on
this time?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh yeah, yeah. The horses just went out. I had
these michonized horses that we sold in Grandon Road. They're
large skeletons of beautiful horses, and they light up and
they neigh. They make evil and the driveway and so
they're already out in the driveway. They got put up today.
The pumpkins have arrived from the garden and from the

(24:15):
pumpkin farm, and they're all out there now, and then
other things will be happening.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
It's Octoberfest at Martha's World. Okay, So then we go
to sixty seven seventy two. You began your career on
Wall Street. How did you get your start there?

Speaker 1 (24:39):
I decided after school that I did want a career
in Wall Street, and I sort of got interested in investing,
bought some stocks through my father in law, and started
to learn about American companies, and I thought this would
be an interesting an interesting place to go. I interviewed
Merrill Lynch, I interviewed Parker red Path, something that's a

(25:02):
class Parker and red Path. They were too snotty. And
then I interviewed a little firm called Pearlberg Moness and
these go go guys, I mean they were the wild guys.
That was if you saw Wall Street the movie, this
was Wall Street times ten, and that appealed to me.
I just really I really liked that atmosphere because they

(25:24):
were making a lot of money and they were investing
in very avant garde companies like McDonald's. Can you imagine McDonald's.
They were early early investors in McDonald's, which has been
one of the best investments ever. And they were investing
in something called Electronic Data Systems EDS. They gave me
some really difficult clients. They gave me the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

(25:49):
They were really hard. I had to go to Rockefeller
Center and pitch them stocks. They gave me Fidelity in Boston.
I had to take the plane up to Boston and
I one day I my husband said to me and
I said where were you all day? And I said, well,
I had to fly up to Boston. I took this
funny little man, he's like right out of the Army,
Ross Parrot to sell electronic data systems to Fidelity and

(26:14):
Ross Parrot, I mean he ran for president. Remember he
invited him and not on the right party, but he
invited me to his to his acceptance speech when he
was running. And I had so much fun with him.
He was really interesting and that company was really interesting.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Are there many other women there at the time I was.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
There was one other woman called Donna. She was tough.
She got bitten by a shark and then she stopped
working a real shark, a shark literally, yeah, yeah, real shark.
And and these guys were collecting all right, Barbara Nessen's
were hanging on the wall, and Robert mother Wells. I mean,
this was a wild place, just like the movie. And

(26:51):
the education that I got was so good.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, ask you what stayed with you from that? What
did you learn? What was the most important thing you
learned from that?

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Was good research? Yes, I learned a lot about research
from Frank Williams, who is still working and still doing stuff,
and he's just amazing. How important really researching companies like
researching Tesla. Okay, you have to research these companies before
you really take a stand on them. And Apple and Microsoft,

(27:24):
and you can also have a boyfriend who worked at Microsoft.
That was a good one. That was the good boyfriend.
And I learned a lot about software, and I learned
about a lot about Microsoft and about what they do
and how they do it.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Were you able to buy those stocks?

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, bought everything you know.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
That was a good job. Then Okay, tell us about
moving to Turkey Hill Road in Westport, Connecticut and restoring
eighteen oh five house. Was that your first major renovation project.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Well, we had a little cottage in the Berkshires first,
and we learned how to do plumbing and carpentry. I
was a bad carpenter. I was an even worst plumber.
But I was very good painter, and very good decorator,
and very good at at finishing things. And you would
not have liked my kitchen cabinet so much, but I
did build the entire cabinet cabinet, all the cabinets in

(28:13):
the kitchen. And this was like a playhouse in the
middle of nowhere in Middlefield, Massachusetts, right down the road
from Glendale Falls. Some friends down the street had a
TV and we watched our moon landing. That was so exciting,
and it was. It was a fantastic time, and it
was a very nice upbringing for my daughter. She loved
it there and she became a horse of Ventor and

(28:35):
she it was. It was all very nice. But then
then Westport, then we bought Westport, Andy, and I we
shouldn't have gone that far out. I mean, it was
it was a long commute but actually he was working
in Greenwich and I was working in New York, so
the onus was on me to go all the way
to New York every day. So it was kind of hard.
But I loved my house. It was an eighteen oh

(28:56):
five farmhouse, Federal farmhouse. It was complete wreck when we
bought it on Cheo acres. We bought the next chee acres,
and then we bought another shoe acres, and so I
was on six acres, which I transformed into a very
beautiful garden, which is still extremely beautiful. The new owners,
the people I sold it to you about twenty years ago,
have taken amazing good care of the place.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Was it at this house that I read that you
reportedly had very risk and nude pool parties.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I don't know where that comes from. I never had
a nude pool party ever. I think people swam in
the nude, but it was not a party.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Much better. I'll be sure to fix that.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I want to know where that comes from.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh okay, So then was it in that basement In
nineteen seventy six, you and a model friend, Norma Collier,
started a catering business.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Oh yeah, norm mccaire, who was also one of the
ten best dress college girls the year before I was
and Norm M. Collier was a very sort of stiff
woman with two kids and a German husband, and she
was very, very strict, And she and I became partners
in the Uncatered Affair. That was the name of our

(30:10):
catering business. She lasted less than a year, and she
was a good cook, but she did not want to
work hard like that. That was hard work.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Do you said Julia Child was a huge influence. Did
you really cook every recipe in her two volumes?

Speaker 1 (30:24):
I absolutely did, mastering the artifle. And I should have
been in that movie.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
You should.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
That movie should have happened. Then I would have been
a much better Julia. Julie Julie. I'm not Julia. I
would have been Julie Meryl Streep. I could have been
the student, but I was too old by then.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Also, with your catering business in nineteen seventy seven, you
were hired to see the opening party have a gorgeous
news store in New York called Abitare on fifty seventh
Street between third and second. Do you remember that.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yes, I was doing the pr at the time.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Oh you were a time I met you my party. Nice.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
I'll tell you a party was beautiful. That It's the
first time we ever saw tables of cruditay that were
not just strips of carrots and celery. Everything was in
you know, there was our chips, cabbages and everything was
inside the ridicio heads and the cabbage heads. It was gorgeous.
But you made everybody in the stort crazy. Why because
you tried to move everything around and you you were

(31:23):
like making them all nuts. And I remember saying my friends,
she's never gonna make it in New York. So much
for my prediction.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
But I did the big party in the armory for
the Folk Kurt Museum antique show. That was one of
the funnest parties because I brought in cages of chickens,
live chickens that were growing, and bales of hay. This
is before the fire department got smart, and and that
was that was such a beautiful party and people are
people still talk about that because it was unusual. Absolutely,

(31:56):
and now it's not so unusual to see live chickens
walking around in cages and stuff, you know, like cows.
Cows are at parties now.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, Okay. Then Andrew became the president of Harry Abrams
Publishing and he hired you catering company do a big
book release for a title that was a very very
successful book, The Secret Book of Nums.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yes, but the first one was Fairies. The party. That
party was Fairies, and it was by Rune Portfleet of Dutch,
author and illustrator, and we did the Fairies party, and
that's where I met That's where I met everybody in publishing.
I met Alan Murkin, who was running Crown Publishers at
the time, and what a lovely, lovely man he was,

(32:38):
and he was walking around looking I had girls dresses Fairies.
We had it at the US Customs House, which is
one of the great landmark buildings here in New York,
way down in the Financial District, and I had every
All the girls had wings and they had little gossamer
dresses and serving. We cooked omelets on those little stoves

(32:59):
all night long. The late party guests we're invited to
come like at ten o'clock at night and stay until
two or three. My mother in law decided to do
the code check and she forgot to give numbers and
just a little, just a little glitch in the evening
because nobody could get their coats. It was so horror horrorfic.

(33:20):
But I remember that was the only bad thing about
that party. But it was such a beautiful, beautiful party.
And mister Murk and Allan invited me to come and
talk to them about doing a book. And that was
your first big book, And that was my book, Entertaining.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
How many of you have that book?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
I can't see anybody. It was really a story book.
It was a picture book, and it was a recipe book.
And I worked on it with a woman called Elizabeth
Hawes who was married to a crazy guy called Davis Weinstock.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
And your next books were done under the Clarkson Potter.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, that's cool, that's Crown. Yeah. Clarkson Potter is an
imprint of Crown Publishers. And I've been with them ever
since nineteen eighty two, so that's over forty years.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
And that was the same time that a good friend
of mine who you knew well, Lee Bailey, was doing
cookbook Oh love. Those were the first real cookbooks with photographs.
Oh yes, the food before that, you never saw pictures
of the food exactly.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
And Claires and Potter at first when they saw that
Entertaining and the volume of pictures and texts. They said, well,
how about black and white? I said, absolutely not. It
has to be a full color book. It has to
be a beautiful book in addition to being a useful book.
And so that's been the whole that's my modus operandi
in for books. It has to be beautiful, it has

(34:34):
to be useful, it has to be practical, and you
have to be able to read it, and you have
to be able to read it. So we're on the
hundredth now.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Well, the books followed Martha Stewart, Quick Cook, Martha Stewart
or durvs Martha Stewart, Pies and Tarts, Weddings, The Wedding Planner,
Martha's Do Secrets for Entertaining, Quick Quick cook Menus, Martha's
Steward Christmas. And now it's up to one hundred books.
That's pretty Yeah, it's very exciting. One hundred book, come on.

(35:02):
And that was followed by endless articles in magazine's newspapers,
TV appearances on Oprah and Larry King. Any of those
experiences stand out to you as well.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
I still have my first interview on Oprah when she
was in Baltimore. It was it was so interesting. It's
so interesting to look at that interview with Oprah then
and then and see Oprah now. It's it's incredible. And
the same thing with Rosie O'Donnell was early interviews with
Rosie and being on her show the whole My life

(35:35):
has really spanned so many decades that and so many
interesting things happened in each of those decades, in terms
of media, in terms of fashion, in terms of just lifestyle,
evolution of lifestyle. It's been a very interesting, interesting life.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
That's why you're here tonight, thank you. Oh but then
it kind of that time your marriage was over. You
separated during the wedding book tour.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Now take that and that was so cruel. Ugh, it
was so cruel having to talk about weddings when you're
in the middle of a like a not a very
nice divorce.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Well that was after twenty six years together. And you
were quoted in CNN saying and in twenty seventeen quote,
I had to sacrifice a marriage because of the lore
of the great job, the fabulous workplace. But I don't
regret it at all, because what I've done is something
bigger and better than just one marriage who was nice.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
I must have that's okay, and have to remember to
look for that one up.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
I'd be a little embroidered on a pillow. I also
read that you dated Sir Anthony Hopkins for a while
but broke up because you couldn't stop thinking of him
as a Hannibal lecter.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, that's true too, because I was introduced to him
by Tom Cruise when he was still married to Nicole.
And they took me out to Tom Cruise. That's no,
that was nice. They took me out to dinner with
Anthony and Sir Hopkins and out in California, and then
he took me back to his house. It was a

(37:14):
nice house, it wasn't great, and and I was staying
at the Beverly Hills Hotel and and I said I
had to go back to the hotel because I had
to work the next morning. And then he said, please,
you know, come back to come back tomorrow night. And
he was very nice, very very nice. But then I
was trying to think if I could possibly invite him
up to Maine, because I have this large home in Maine,

(37:36):
and I just couldn't think of having him stay on this,
like the second floor, because it's too close to Hannibal.
I mean, really, he's a very good actor. How stupid
he was. He's a very interesting man. I'm stupid.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Other famous manudated famous.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
The man who invented word in excel for Microsoft. He
was number thirteen employee at Microsoft. He's a geek. He's
his t shirts read eminence geek. And so I should
have taken that as a but that was fifteen years.
I duted him for fifteen years. And and he you know,
he had the he had the boat, he at the plane,

(38:20):
he had the helicopters, he had you know, all that
stuff that was a transportation. And then he had the
transport and and but I actually really was I was
really very kind, as you put in anything. You know.
I was a nice, nice person, and I thought he
should have kids, and I was I was too old
to have kids at that point. And I, you know,
I kept encouraging him, you know, have some babies someplace,

(38:43):
you know. Because so then he he married somebody like
twenty five years younger than he, of course, and she
got all the planes and the boats and all of
that stuff, and the babies and the babies.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Okay. In nineteen ninety you signed with Time Publishing ventures
to develop a new magazine called Martha Stewart Living that
started with a base circulation of three hundred and fifty thousand,
and it peaked years later at over two million copies
per issue. Tell us about that magazine, which I loved
very much.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Well, it passes fortieth anniversary, which I was very proud of.
The magazine was presented first as a book series of books.
To Clarkson Potter, I said, you know, I'd like to
write about all other subjects, not just food. And I
had done food and gardening and weddings, and I thought
that there are many other categories of lifestyle that I

(39:33):
could really write about, including collecting, including entertaining, including decorating,
including just special special life events. And they said, ah,
you know, we'll just do books. We're planning to do
books and all those subjects we don't want you just

(39:53):
to do. I called them the beautiful how to books.
So then I thought, ah, well, the format that would
really work for all of this would be a magazine.
And at the time, in nineteen eighty nine, magazines were
not doing so well. They were several magazines I think
for every new magazine, three were closing. And because of
the advertising at that comment at that time. But I

(40:14):
went to sign neuhause he gave me he liked the
idea and he liked the name living, and he gave
me the money to build a prototype. And I worked
with jug Turshian and several other really talented people to
create this beautiful, beautiful prototype magazine. And then when SI
saw it, and we became friends during the process, so
I saw it, he said, oh, well, what do you

(40:34):
want to call it? And I said, well, Martha's Stewart Living.
And he said, well, this is Condy Nast Martha, and
it has to be Condy Nest Living. And I said,
if that's a deal breaker, can I have the prototype?
And he gave me the prototype, and I went to
another very powerful, lovely man. I went to succession to Rupert,

(40:59):
and I first met with his lawyers. I was in
a room way up high in some building and they're
all very they're waiting for Rupert to show up, and
they're all chatting away and being friendly, and they had
sort of thumbed through the prototype and Rupert came in.
They all changed totally. I mean, it was just it

(41:20):
really was like the show. Rupert changed the whole room
Oh my god, he really had it at that especially
at that time, this is nineteen eighty nine. He was
fantastic and he said he looked at it and said,
I would really like to do this, but I'm selling
my magazines. I'm you know, seventeen, I just sold and
I'm selling this and I'm selling that. And he said,

(41:42):
I suggest you take this to Time. So he gave
me at least a lead to Time, and so I
went to Time and met with the CEO and the
president of Time Magazines and we had lunch at Caravillan
restaurant and the guys looked through the prototype at lunch
and they said, yeah, this is the July issue. What
are you going to do next to wy It looks
like you covered it. And I said, well, you don't

(42:03):
get it. It's living is limitless. This is a subject
matter that can go on for years and years and years.
And they finally bought it, and they but they did.
I said, if you don't like it after a while,
you know, here's a piece of paper, what's the price
for me to get it back? Because it's a fifty
to fifty kind of partnership. And they wrote down a
kind of an astronomical sum at the time, but it

(42:25):
turned out to be a bargain after the few years
I was there, and I bought it back.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
And how soon after that did Martha Stewart Living become
a TV show?

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Oh? Pretty soon, right after. I believed in a word
called synergy. At first time thought that was a dirty word,
and I thought, you know, time, you're get with it.
You know, TV does not cannibalize the magazine. People who
watch TV don't necessarily buy the magazine, but if they
get hooked on the TV show, they'll buy the magazine.
And we had a big arguments about synergy, and the

(42:56):
synergy went on, and I mean these arguments went on.
It was real kind of boring after a while. But
I got a TV show. At first it was a
weekly once once a week show on CBS. Then it
went to daily and and that was fantastic in retrospect.
I wouldn't be doing a daily magazine if I were myself,

(43:18):
if I were still being editor in chief and creator
of the magazine itself, because you take on you know,
you just can't balance it all. It's very hard. And
even though I had a fabulous editor in chief as
old A Motley who stayed and worked for time. After
a while, I was always doing too much, but uh,
but it was great. And then the TV show became

(43:40):
very successful the and I and I liked doing it
because I got such great guests on the show. Everybody
wanted to be a guest. I mean, Russell Crowe came on,
you know, what the heck you know? And uh and
and all in late night hosts came on because they
loved the show. Everybody did.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah. And when did you start? When did did you
meet and start working with you? Long time publicist Susan mcgrino.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh, about forty years ago, a little bit more. Susan
was maybe an associate editor, but she was doing pr
and marketing at Clarkson Potter. So that's where we met.
I remember encouraging her. She would go on all the
book trips with me. I mean we went we went
to all over the country and we had so much fun.
When we went down in Mississippi, we stopped in to

(44:25):
visit on John Grisham and we stopped in we had
Dome perignyome for breakfast with him. And then we would
drive around and rented Cadillacs and we had so much
fun and we still have fun. She went to Paris
with me this past weekend.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Just came back trip to Pramez. Yeah, you did mention
the late night talk shows. I mean you've been on Letterman,
Fallon seth Meyer, all of those. Often is the one
that's your favorite?

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Oh no, it's like my children. You can never say that,
they're all so different. I did like messing up David
Letterman's suit. I was able. They let me pour stuff
on his suit and they said, nobody's ever been able
to do that before. And he didn't hit me.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
And then a couple of years later, you were working
with Sharon Patrick and managed to purchase all your television,
print and merchandise and ventures related to this, Martha Stewart
Brand consolidated into a new company which you became chairman, chairwoman,
CEO and president of Martha Stewart on the Media.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Arthur Stewart Living on the Media.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
How did that change everything?

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Wow? It was great and the contracts were wonderful. We
got kmart to approve a contract that allowed us to
license all the products that we were developing. My theory
was that if you read the magazine and you get
all these fantastic ideas everything every I mean, if you

(45:53):
see a yellow towel in our magazine, you want that towel,
but you can't make the towel, but you could by
the towel. So that's how the merchandising started. So omnimedia
meant in the center. It was the it was like
a solar system. My business plan was beautiful, it was
it was the solar system. Middle was content. The first
little orbit orbit was omnim media. So that was the

(46:17):
magazines and the books. Then it was omni merchandising the
products that emanated from all that content. Then it was
omni Internet because the Internet was just starting. I mean
Google is just twenty five years old and my magazine's
forty years old. But in nineteen eighty two I bought
my first computer, so I knew that computers were going
to be something special. And it's it's all panned out and.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Then you went. Then you went public on the New
York Stock Exchange October nineteen ninety nine, twenty three years ago.
What was that day like?

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Well, I remember serving croissant and nice drinks to all
the traders on the floor, and the company went public
with great eight enthusiasm, and the stock went from eighty
eighteen dollars a share opening price to about thirty seven
dollars a year, so we became instant billionaires.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
You were the first female self made billionaire in the
US BEFO.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah, and I remember. But the funnest thing was I
remember driving up Madison Avenue and saying, Oh, Josh, I
could stop anywhere and buy anything today. It was so excited.
That was exciting. And then I went home and my mom.
My mom had sold all her stock and she was
a She was a millionaire at the end of the day.

(47:34):
She was smart. She sold the stock on the first day,
but unbeknownst to me, we didn't put it. We didn't
put a stop gap on her. She was just she
was very smart.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
But then what happened a couple of years later, You
got a tip from your broker.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
No, I didn't get a tip, and it was all
that is old old newsman, and I ran into a
financial problem and I was accused of lying about and
lying about a crime I didn't commit. So it's kind
of convoluted. You're going to have to wait for my documentary,
which is coming out next year, to learn the real story,

(48:13):
and I'm not talking about it. And it was at
the wrong time. I was in the wrong time at
the wrong place. Look what's going on in the newspapers
two day Supreme Court Justice Menendez terms, all.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Right, so you're not going to tell us about five
months in a prison in West.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Oh the five months are It's fine. They were. It
was like going to camp. It was called it was
called Camp Alderson. We nicknamed it Camp Olderson. It was
on the grounds of a all girls private school, like
a like a junior college in West Virginia, on a
river polluted by the coal mines. And and it was

(48:55):
kind of interesting. I was in a dormitory. I had
a roommate. She had the top funk. I had the
bottom bunk, and she slept with giant curlers in her
hair every night. And and you were not You were
allowed three books a week. That's all. You were allowed
three books from the library. And I managed to get
more books. There were like things to do at night

(49:15):
after after dinner. You there was craft classes. There was
a writing class. There was an entrepreneurial class.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
All these classes.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
No, no, I actually taught entrepreneurial behavior and that. And
when I got I asked for business plans. Oh gosh,
there were some crazy plants, very interesting, and I helped.
I helped a lot of women there, and I made
some nice friends, Sister Carol Gilbert. She was a Catholic
nun who had been convicted of trespassing on government property

(49:45):
on a nuclear warhead site out in Colorado. She was
there for like fifteen years. Horrible, horrible misjustice and injustice
I learned. I learned a lot about the American penal
system and how stupid it is.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
But do you remember a visit you had when you
were there from the designer Ralph Rucci, who's here tonight.
He managed to smuggle in some frockaf.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
The smuggling stuff worked sort of. I mean, thanks Ralph.
We love Ralph, we love him. But I had nice visitors.
Nathan Mervel from Microsoft came down in his private plane
just to see me and talk. Gil Butler came down
from New York to talk about my foundation and what

(50:30):
I should do. I mean, amazing visits. Andy Monest, my
old stockbroker boss. He came down on the wrong day
and had to go back. They wouldn't let him see me.
And you know, stuff like that. Stupid stuff. I got
put into solitary, which was like a whole way with
a bench in it for a day because they found
a hard boiled egg in my room. I made apple

(50:56):
jelly from the crab apples growing outside our dormitory, and
and that was okay. They didn't mind that.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
They didn't invite you into the kitchen to cook anything.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Oh no, no, you wouldn't want to be in that kitchen.
You know, twelve month old eggs and stuff's crazy. But
I had a friend, Audium, who's was there for not
telling stories on her boyfriend, and her mother is from Eritrea,
and she would bring those that soft, beautiful bread, you know,

(51:24):
the Ethiopian bread stuffed in her bra because it didn't
show up on the X rays. And we would eat
that delicious Ungia bread. Oh so good.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Okay, So that really didn't change a lot in your life,
because when you came out, they would deals with kmarts,
years more shows. We're on the Hallmark Channel. You acted
in Law and Order SVU. You're an ugly betty and
then you serious exam. You did flooring and furniture collections, wines,
frozen food with Costco.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
No, it was okay, and because I think people realized
the enormous of injustice and crazy stuff going on.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
How many different lines do you have or have you had? Licenses?

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Quite a few. I especially love doing the doing the
home goods, the kitchen wears. We have some beautiful kitchen wears.
We just started our own Martha store on Amazon, which
is growing nicely. I was doing a very nice fashion
line talking about fashion icons on QVC, which did very well.
I mean, they loved my embroidered jeans. I had peacocks

(52:30):
on them because of my peacocks and poppy flowers because
I grow a lot of poppies. We did very nice,
very nice clothing for QVC, well fitted and well made.
My downpuffer vest is very popular still. We're now making
it in leather, which everybody loves. Pleather, not real leather,
vegan leather.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
And all of this is online.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
A lot of it's online. I'm doing a line of
sketches which are extremely popular. Commercials are running, yeah, they're
running all the time. And I'm actually really having some
influence on the designs and on the actual fabrication. And
they're very nice, very nice comfortable shoes. Even my male
friends are wearing them.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
And you got your friend, which we'll talk about. Snoop
Dogg tell us about that.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Really, Snoop and I became friends on my program. He
came to talk about brownies and different recipes a long
long time ago. And then we were asked. We were
both asked to be on the Justin Bieber Roast and
Snoop and I sat next to each other and rebonded,

(53:37):
and somebody saw our behavior on that roast and asked
us if we would do a show. We did the
Martha and Snoop Pop Luck Dinner Party show, which was
very fun. I got to meet every rapper, every performer
that I had never dreamed of meeting and talking to
on that show. We had a great time, and I
brought I brought unusual foods. I mean I brought mister

(53:59):
chow on and Snoop had to eat stuff that he
had never tasted before. He now has two successful cookbooks
because of me, Yeah, because of me. And he also
has a line of sketchers.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
And he has a new holiday show coming up.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Oh he's He's doing a lot of good stuff and
has a movie coming out to which I cannot wait for.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
And I also read which I'm very excited about you
creating a healthy cat and dog food line cooperation with
Chewy Does. Yes.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Oh, that's just hitting the stores and my dogs love it.
My cat is a little fussy, but but she she's
she's she'll like it when she when she gets nothing
else eat everyst tang has everything. She's the greatest. How

(54:48):
many animals do you have, Oh, several hundred, because I have.
I have five horses, five donkeys. Five. I ride the
horses and the girls are riding on Sunday and Monday.
We have peacocks. We have all kinds of We have
the United Nations of geese. We have German geese, we
have Chinese geese, we have Italian geese, we have French geese,

(55:10):
the ones with the big livers. And we have American geese.
And they're beautiful and they're they're all living happily on
the property.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Okay, let's go to Sports Illustrated May twenty three cover
how did that opportunity come to you and were you
at all hesitant that being photographed in a bathing suit
at your age?

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Well? I have My body's pretty good, and you know,
I work out. I got the call in November. Susan mcgreen. Now,
I don't know if it's Susan's called me first and
warned me that they were going to call. Somebody called me,
and so I was waiting for Mjday, who's this fabulous editor.
She's been the editor of the Sports Illustrated magazine for
quite a while. Young, beautiful and blonde. And she said,

(55:57):
you know, we'd like you to pose for the swimsuit issue,
and you want to do that. I mean, for heaven's sake,
to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated at eighty
two years old in a bathing suit. And I didn't
know I had nine pages to do and nine different
bathing suits. So we get we they she said this,
in two months, we're going to go down to to

(56:19):
Cosa de Compo in the Dominican Republic. And it was
it was fun. I got there on a Thursday night,
I think it was Wednesday night. Had to try on
I don't know how many bathing suits, and you know,
you have to sort of like I had had. I
had been waxed, I had been sprays hand, I had
been quaffed and bleached in the whole the whole thing.

(56:41):
I think I even had my face waxed. I mean
all kinds of straight. You do all these things, and
I don't spend a lot of time on that. I
have to have makeup for TV every day, but I
don't spend a lot of time doing the other stuff.
But I do go. I did go to plates. I
discovered pilates, and I went at least three times a week,
sometimes four times a week to pilates, and then continued
to horseback ride and my regular trainer. So I got

(57:02):
in good shape and it shows in the pictures.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
It totally does truth.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
And you and you, and it's and it's kind of fun,
I mean, being poked and prodd. And they called them girls.
I mean, you know, for Heaven's sake, you know, let's
push your girls this way or that. I mean, they
have a whole different language and a bathing suit. Shoot.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
So is Playboy next?

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Never?

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Okay? We want we won't wait for that? Or what
about the new TV show on the Bachelor is the
Golden Bachelor? You can be the Golden Bachelorette?

Speaker 1 (57:36):
No, no, no interest?

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Okay, okay, we talked about They.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
Asked me to be dancing in the stars. That kind
of appealed to me, but I had had to spend
too much time out west and so I have the business.
I can't spend that time out in the West Coast.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
A good friend of mine, which is whos usually always
hear what is out to myight, Jeffrey Banks posted a
picture of Kevin McCarthy as on Dancing with the Stars.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
So that's way way. I was at a dinner and
this handsome man was sitting two seats for me until
I realized who it was. It was Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Is it true that your shoe size is twelve?

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Excuse me?

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Your shoe size is a ten ten. Somebody told me
you size twelve twelve? And do you really have someone
paint the red bottoms of the Lubaton shoes by.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Painted with a black sharpie pen because I don't want
red heels on the I'm red soles on my shoes
like everybody else.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Good for you, okay.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
He accosted me about that. He was not happy he
was on this stage of me.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
He was, okay, okay, And you're doing a new ford
a line of comfortable gardening clothes with Tractor Supply Company.
I think that sounds fantastic.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Very fun. See, because that what do I wear every day.
I wear that stuff in the garden. I have a big,
big garden, and I and a big property, and I
have to wear comfortable clothes and I still have to
look nice. I remember my daughter when she was at
greens Farms Academy. She came home one day and she said, mother,
can I ask you to do one thing? And I said,
what she said, do not wear your apron to the

(59:12):
grocery store. Because somebody said and told her that they
had seen me in an apron. So you have to
look nice when you go to the grocery store. And
I want all women to feel comfortable and work well
and still have you know, have some style.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
That's great. What's your favorite item that you have with
your name on it?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Very my square ladle, square ladle. It wasn't that weird.
It's a ladle. You know, Usually ladle's a round or
oval or you know, but this is a square one
with a handle on one side. So it's like when
you're filling jilly jars you pour out a corner. Yes,
and so that's one of my very favorite tools. The

(59:51):
weirdest and the weirdest thing I my name on it. Kevin,
what a dibber. You need a dibber. My gibber is
a pointed tool that you pushed down into the ground
to plant bulbs or little plants, and that's called a jibber.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
I'm going to go to some audience questions, but then
I have two more things to ask you. A question
from a Ukrainian woman to a Polish woman. Do you
prefer your Perrogi's boiled, a fried?

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Oh, boiled, always boiled first and then next day warmed
and brown butter.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Nice? Okay. What was your most memorable wardrobe malfunction?

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Hmm oh. I went to a dinner at the White
House and for some stupid reason, I wore a beautiful
suit by the way Ralph Lauren pink silk chantung suit,
but it had culots and I got kind of a
line for wearing coolots to the White House formal dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
What is the best gift you have ever received?

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Best gift was the birth of my child, and the
second best were the two grandchildren.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Great. What advice do you have for any aspiring entrepreneurs
watching or listening to you tonight?

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
If you have a good idea and you have a
passion for that idea, take it to the next level.
Build a business plan, be serious, know that the work
is all ahead of you, that business plans easy compared
to what comes afterward. And go for it. I think
going for it is like the best thing that you

(01:01:31):
could possibly ever do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
I'd like to end tonight's talk with something that you
said to Booth Moore from Women's With Daily and a
talk during the Magic Show in Vegas, And this is
a quote from you. You must really assume an authentic personality.
You must be authentic to yourself and to the public.
You must learn every day so that you can teach
every day. I am a teacher. I don't think of
reinvention as much as I think of evolution. I want

(01:01:57):
to evolve and evolve and get better and not stay
the same.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
And that's the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
That's the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
That is the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
And tonight we had a masterclass from the best teacher
in the world. Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
That is so nice.