Martha Stewart claims Ina Garten was extremely unfriendly when she went to prison: She stopped talking to me

Martha Stewart and Ina Garten’s friendship hasn’t always been chocolate chip cookies and coconut cupcakes. The domestic doyens’ friendship appears to have become strained when Stewart, 83, went away to prison in 2004 for charges related to conspiracy and obstruction of justice. “When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,” Stewart told The New Yorker in a Sept.2 profile on Garten, 76. “I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly,” she added.  Stewart was sent to Alderson Federal Prison Camp after being convicted of conspiracy, obstruction and two counts of lying to federal investigators.

She was also accused of securities fraud, though a jury found her not guilty on that more serious charge. A judge sentenced the homemaking icon to five months in prison, five months of home confinement and two years of supervised probation.She was also hit with a $30,000 fine. Stewart has always maintained she was innocent. Garten disputes and “firmly” denies Stewart’s recollection of what happened between them in 2004, a period The New Yorker described as “the end of their friendship.” Stewart’s publicist, Susan Magrino, also told the outlet that her client is “not bitter at all” about the fallout with Garten. “There’s no feud,” Magrino insisted. Stewart and Garten met in the early ’90s thanks to a lemon square emergency. While driving around East Hampton, New York, in a giant black suburban one day, Stewart all of a sudden “veered almost crashingly to the curb and said, ‘I’ve got to get lemon squares,’” Chip Gibson – the head of Crown Publishing  at the time – recalled to The New Yorker.That led Stewart to Garten’s since-shuttered Barefoot Contessa shop.“My desk was right in front of the cheese case and we just ended up in a conversation,” Garten recalled of the meeting in a 2017 TIME interview.

“We ended up actually doing benefits together where it was at her house a...