Ina Garten Details a Separation from Husband Jeffrey in Her New Memoir: ‘Hardest Thing I Ever Did’ (Exclusive)

Standing in the library of her East Hampton, N.Y., home, Ina Garten cradles her husband Jeffrey’s face in her hands, reassuring him that he looks handsome for the PEOPLE cameras. “He’s just the best,” she says once he’s left the room.

The interaction makes it almost impossible to imagine that the Food Network star’s relationship was ever anything but #couplegoals. But in her bold new memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens, excerpted in this week's cover story, Ina, 76, details their separation and near-divorce in the 1970s.

Ina was working overtime running the Barefoot ­Contessa — a specialty food store that would later launch her fame — and Jeffrey “expected a wife that would make dinner,” she tells PEOPLE. 

“There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying,” Ina says. “I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”

At the time, Ina had quit her job in Washington, D.C., where she and Jeffrey both worked in the White House, to run the Barefoot Contessa. Jeffrey stayed in D.C. and came to the Hamptons on weekends.

"When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles —­ took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces," Ina writes in her memoir (out Oct. 1). "While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There was no expectation about who got home from work first and what they should do, because I never got home from work!"

"When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay enough attention to him. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store. Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live. I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out who I was or what I wanted unless I was on my own. I needed that freedom."

Ina contemplated a divorce but instead asked Jeffrey for a separation.

"I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce," she writes. "I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — ­or hurt — ­him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation."

"It was the hardest thing I ever did. I told him that I needed to be on my own. I didn’t say whether it was for now ... or forever. In true Jeffrey form, he said, 'If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it.' He packed his bag and went home to Washington with no plan to come back. I buried my emotions and threw myself into my work."

For more on Ina Garten, including the the full excerpt from her memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

When the Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter, Ina moved back to D.C. shortly before Jeffrey left on a six-week work trip. 

"Jeffrey met me at the [train] station, and when we got to our house, we sat together on the steps outside, reluctant to go in because we were caught between two worlds: the way it used to be when we were Ina and Jeffrey, and the sad way it was now. A painful limbo."

"'What can I do to change your mind?' he asked so hopefully, not understanding that I doubted we could make our relationship work, and that we might be heading for divorce. I just couldn’t live with him in a traditional 'man and wife' relationship. Jeffrey hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just doing what every man before him had done. But we were living in a new era, and that behavior wasn’t okay with me anymore. I had changed."

Ina told Jeffrey he’d need to see a therapist if he wanted her back. She hoped a professional would help him see her as a partner with an equally important voice.

"One hour, that's all Jeffrey needed," Ina tells PEOPLE. "He went once for an hour and totally got it."

"Jeffrey’s willingness to see the therapist was as significant as anything that might happen during their session," she writes in Be Ready When the Luck Happens. "He was that determined to convince me he was serious about making our marriage work."

"Six weeks passed. We talked, we listened, and more important, we heard each other when we aired our concerns. Moving forward, we could be equals who took care of each other. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but if we worked toward the same goal, we could change things together."

They came out of that time stronger than ever. Jeffrey, 77, now a professor at Yale, has been her lifeline since they started dating in 1965. Also in her memoir, Ina reveals that her childhood in Stamford, Conn., was darkened by emotional abuse from her mother, Florence, a dietitian, and physical abuse by her father, Charles, a surgeon.

Looking back at the rocky period in her marriage to Jeffrey, Ina has no regrets about asking for a separation.

"Thank god I did," she says. "I think how crazy that was and how dangerous it was, but we wouldn't have the relationship we have now if I hadn't done it."

"It changed him," she adds, "but it also changed me too."

Be Ready When the Luck Happens comes out Oct. 1 from Crown Publishing Group and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.