In her Netflix documentary, divulges intimate new details about her relationship with her ex-husband — to whom she lost her virginity at age 19.
As she recalls in Martha, the lifestyle mogul, 83, met her former spouse during their college years in the film, which premiered on Wednesday, October 30. The two were set up by Andrew’s sister, who happened to be one of her classmates at Barnard.
“He picked me up in his little yellow Mercedes sedan. I had never been in a Mercedes before,” Martha, who was 19 at the time of their first date, recalled. “We went out to dinner. 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.”
Martha said she was “madly in love” with Andrew by the time their date came to an end. Equally smitten, Andrew would send her money to pay for train tickets to visit him weekly at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It was not long after that the two became intimate.
“I had never slept with anybody before this,” she shared. “He was very aggressive and I liked it.”
The idea of marrying Andrew felt “natural” to Martha, but the pair’s union was initially unapproved by her father, . “I went home and told my dad, and my dad slapped me. And he slapped me hard on my face, and said ‘No. You’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew,’” she explained, noting that she remembered “getting that slap.”
Not being “surprised” by his violent and anti-Semitic reaction, Martha clapped back by declaring that she would marry Andrew regardless of his thoughts. The two tied the knot in 1961. Their daughter, , was born four years later.
Among the documentary’s biggest revelations was Martha’s admission that both she and Andrew had affairs before they ended their marriage in 1987. (They finalized their divorce in 1990.)
Martha’s flings included kissing a “very handsome” guy on her honeymoon in Florence, Italy, and having a “very brief affair” with an Irish man in the ‘60s. “It was nothing,” she said of the incidents. “I would never have broken up a marriage for it.
She went on to state that one of Andrew’s affairs took place in their Westport, Connecticut home, while she was working on her cookbooks. “I don’t know how many different girlfriends he had during this time, but I think there were quite a few,” she stated.
Andrew, for his part, told the documentary crew that he “didn’t stray” from their relationship until she did.
The Martha film documents the ups and downs of the TV icon’s career, legal troubles and storied comeback. In an interview with The New York Times published on Wednesday, Martha revealed that she “hates” the documentary’s ending. “[Director] [] had total access, and he really used very little,” she told the outlet. “It was just shocking.”
She added: “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden? Boy, I told him to get rid of those. And he refused. I hate those last scenes. Hate them. … I had ruptured my Achilles tendon. I had to have this hideous operation. And so I was limping a little. But again, he doesn’t even mention why — that I can live through that and still work seven days a week.”
