Speaker 1: Last week, I was interviewed by Ferne Malice at the
Speaker 1: ninety second Street Why for her long running speaker series,
Speaker 1: Fashion Icons with Berne Malice. Berne has interviewed Oscar de
Speaker 1: la Rena, by anevan Christenberg, really everyone in and around
Speaker 1: the fashion world. We had a candid conversation about my childhood,
Speaker 1: my marriage, my career, my friend Snoop, the Sports Illustrated
Speaker 1: Swimsuit issue, and lots more. I'm posting it here on
Speaker 1: the Martha Stewart Podcast. I know you'll enjoy hearing it.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for being here. Good evening. It's great
Speaker 2: to see so many of you here as this has
Speaker 2: been a remarkable and very special season for fashion Icons
Speaker 2: here at the ninety two and Why. Those of you
Speaker 2: who have been coming through the years know I always
Speaker 2: have a special introduction with anecdotes and info my guests
Speaker 2: will surprise him or her.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Tonight, I'm going to be joined by the busiest working
Speaker 2: woman on this planet. She has done it all and
Speaker 2: still has more to create and brand and sell. And hell,
Speaker 2: it's Martha's Dowart. We all know who she is, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to waste one more minute at the
Speaker 2: podium talking about her when I can have her on
Speaker 2: the stage talking with her. So now is the time
Speaker 2: to cancel your dinner reservations, as we've got a lot
Speaker 2: of years and stories to cover. Ladies and gentlemen and
Speaker 2: everyone else. Let's give a warm and appreciative welcome to
Speaker 2: my friend, the one and only Martha's do it?
Speaker 1: Thank you, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Hi?
Speaker 1: Oh? Thank you, Fern, We thank you. Very exciting. I
Speaker 1: read your bio over today and I found out we
Speaker 1: have something very much in common. We were brought up
Speaker 1: in Buffalo.
Speaker 2: To school in Buffalo. Oh, the University of Buffalo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so my maternal my maternal family, my mother's family
Speaker 1: all worked and lived in Buffalo.
Speaker 2: And I know that that's where you learned canning and
Speaker 2: doing preservation.
Speaker 1: Oh so you know you did your homework. But my
Speaker 1: brother went to the University of Buffalo. He taught their
Speaker 1: dentistry and he's retired now, but he still lives in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: and I love that city.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's start at the very beginning. You were
Speaker 2: born on August third, nineteen forty one, in Jersey City,
Speaker 2: New Jersey. Makes you how old?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: How old?
Speaker 1: Am I don't know? You have to do this subtraction.
Speaker 1: I'm old. I'm eighty two, and Fern is not as
Speaker 1: old as I am. She was born in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: So you and Tom Ford the only ones who called
Speaker 2: me out on my birthday on this stage. You're LEO.
Speaker 2: I think you believe in the stars. I do LEO
Speaker 2: positive traits loyal, wise, confident, a natural leader and generous.
Speaker 2: Some negative traits opinionated, attention seeking, arrogant and stubborn.
Speaker 1: Wow, do you agree with any of us? They go
Speaker 1: well together, okay?
Speaker 2: And some LEO celebrities for whatever it's worth, and they
Speaker 2: hold up well, Yes, you hold up well. Jennifer Lopez, Madonna,
Speaker 2: President Obama and Whitney Houston Company.
Speaker 1: Yep, and mister Brady and oh, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are on my birthday too, Carly close.
Speaker 2: So tell us about your parents.
Speaker 1: Edward Costra Castayra and Martha Martha Roskowsky.
Speaker 2: Is it a Polish thing to name daughters after their mothers.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. My father wanted his first daughter
Speaker 1: to be named Martha, after his beloved wife. And they
Speaker 1: met at guess where in Buffalo. My father was taking
Speaker 1: up Polish language course he's both parents' children of Polish
Speaker 1: immigrants who came by My maternal family and my paternal
Speaker 1: family all came from Poland, some from Levuff and some
Speaker 1: from Krakau, and they came in the early part of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century on by boat went through Roosevelt not
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Island. They went through Ellis Island, and they went
Speaker 1: through Ellis Island, and they changed their They actually didn't
Speaker 1: change their name at the time. Some of their children
Speaker 1: have changed their names. My father refused to change Casteira.
Speaker 1: It's really Costeira. And he did all the research at
Speaker 1: the New York Public Library. He took me there weekend
Speaker 1: after weekend to do genealogical research. He should have started
Speaker 1: an ancestry dot com. But he found out that we
Speaker 1: were actually from the Isle of Coos, which is in Greece.
Speaker 1: So I also think I'm Greek, and then I guess
Speaker 1: they must have been mercenaries going up to Poland. And
Speaker 1: my mother's family settled in Buffalo, New York. My grandfather
Speaker 1: was celebrated on his ninety ninth birthday as the longest
Speaker 1: living member of the Iron Workers Union in Buffalo. He
Speaker 1: was a decorative iron worker He did all the balustrades
Speaker 1: and altars in Buffalo and those big churches. And he
Speaker 1: had hands who never wanted to shake Grandpa's hand because
Speaker 1: he would break your little hand. No, he's so strong.
Speaker 1: He had the anvil all the time in his hand.
Speaker 1: But he very artistic and a lovely, lovely man. And
Speaker 1: he lived on ninety nine. He was an amazing.
Speaker 2: They had a very positive influence on your upbringing.
Speaker 1: Oh very much. So. I would spend a month a
Speaker 1: summer every year in Buffalo. I took the railroad by
Speaker 1: myself with a sandwich up to Buffalo, just one sandwich,
Speaker 1: the one sandwich, and I must have had a little
Speaker 1: cup of milk or something. But my mom took care
Speaker 1: of that and got on the train in Newark, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and ended up in Buffalo.
Speaker 2: Okay, you have five siblings, yes, how do you fit in?
Speaker 1: I was second oldest, my brother Eric with the one
Speaker 1: who went to University of Buffalo. I then my brother Frank,
Speaker 1: who lives down in Alabama, and then my sister Kathy,
Speaker 1: who lives sometimes in Austin and sometimes in Greenwich. And
Speaker 1: then my two youngest siblings unfortunately died not long ago.
Speaker 2: You're still close with all the ones that. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: you've said in some interview that I read that you
Speaker 2: were the favorite child of my father. How was that shown?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I paid the most attention to him.
Speaker 1: Dad was Dad was if you know the play Death
Speaker 1: of a Salesman. My father was Willie Lowman and a
Speaker 1: sort of a disappointed uh not. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: say my father was unsuccessful. He raised amazing children, so
Speaker 1: that is a great success for anybody. But he was
Speaker 1: always a kind of like deprecating, and but also he
Speaker 1: was he was the Eagle Scout counselor and he would
Speaker 1: sit on the stage, bear chested, with a great big
Speaker 1: Native American interest on and he would show off like that,
Speaker 1: and then he would go back to selling pharmaceuticals. He
Speaker 1: started out selling Shaefer beer. You know, he was a salesman.
Speaker 1: He was, but he felt like he had never made it.
Speaker 1: And I always felt very bad about that. And I
Speaker 1: was very close to him, and he was the one
Speaker 1: who really educated me in literature. When I read the
Speaker 1: when I read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, he had
Speaker 1: to and I was like eleven years old. He had
Speaker 1: to explain to me with a scarlet lettermant. Very educated man,
Speaker 1: very well read. He played the violin by ear. He
Speaker 1: would walk around the house shirtless, playing the violin all
Speaker 1: the time. He was always shirtless. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: He was like six two and a half, blonde, curly hair,
Speaker 1: blue eyes, and very handsome and wore beautiful clothes. And
Speaker 1: that was Dad.
Speaker 2: He sounds fabulous. Okay, your mother taught you how to
Speaker 2: cook and sew. What was her.
Speaker 1: Favorite dish that she taught you, Oh, PIROGI And I
Speaker 1: still make her pirogy it's going to be. That's one
Speaker 1: of the recipes in my hundredth book. Yep, my hundred
Speaker 1: favorite recipes. But I stood by your side. I was
Speaker 1: like the student of the family, the serious student. And
Speaker 1: you know, my brother, older brother was the hunter, the trapper.
Speaker 1: He would bring home the muskrats that he sold the
Speaker 1: skins to Sears Roebuck and you got like fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: of skin. So those muskrats were coming in during the
Speaker 1: February and March months when the muskrats were out breeding,
Speaker 1: I guess, and I had to do the skinning because
Speaker 1: I was the neatest, and you'd hang them up in
Speaker 1: the sink in the basement, over these old soapstone sinks.
Speaker 1: And I had a scalpel, and I was like a surgeon,
Speaker 1: so I could get them with no holes in them.
Speaker 1: That you get more money if you didn't have a
Speaker 1: hole in the muskrat skin. But he was also a
Speaker 1: hunter and a fisherman, so I tied all the flies.
Speaker 1: So if the people in the audience any men are
Speaker 1: who are trout fishermen, I tie the best flies, not
Speaker 1: those flies, the little flies.
Speaker 2: All of this makes perfect sense given how you're life
Speaker 2: and career evolved. Even at that age you were doing
Speaker 2: oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurial yep, baking. Mom was a great baker, but she
Speaker 1: always asked me for my vinagrette recipe because I made
Speaker 1: the best vinaigrette in the family, and they still ask
Speaker 1: me for it.
Speaker 2: Are you going to share that with that?
Speaker 1: I've shared it up a million times and they still
Speaker 1: don't know how to make it.
Speaker 2: Do you all know a vinegrete recipe?
Speaker 1: All right, we don't have to get it'll be in
Speaker 1: the hundredth book.
Speaker 2: Describe one of your first jobs at ten years old.
Speaker 2: You were babysitting for some very famous people's children. Mickey
Speaker 2: Mantle and Yogi Berra.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all the Yankees hired the girls from Nottley
Speaker 1: High School to come to like Englewood and around there
Speaker 1: the George Washington Bridge to babysit for their because we
Speaker 1: were known as the reliable ones. And of course, what
Speaker 1: the heck? I never got a baseball I never got
Speaker 1: a baseball card, nothing from these guys. And the only
Speaker 1: one who remembered me sort of, his wife remembered me
Speaker 1: very well was Yogi Berra, and so I was babysit
Speaker 1: for his children too, And up until a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I was still seeing Yogi Berra at Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: as I still love those stupid Yankees.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll pass on.
Speaker 1: And I did the first pitch to I think two
Speaker 1: or three years ago. Yes, yeah, I didn't quite make
Speaker 1: it to home plate, but it was right right in
Speaker 1: front of home plate, which when you watch all the
Speaker 1: other silly first pitches, I mean most of them, I
Speaker 1: don't even get even ten feet within the homeplate, and
Speaker 1: most of them go off like the third base or
Speaker 1: their first base. I got it straight, and I practiced.
Speaker 1: I practiced.
Speaker 2: And you also organize their birthday parties.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, we did a lot of birthday parties. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was That was the beginning I was. I was
Speaker 1: organizing birthday parties from the time I was maybe eight
Speaker 1: years old, seven or eight years old. I was very
Speaker 1: good at organizing and entertaining.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's fifteen though, you started modeling. How did that
Speaker 2: come about?
Speaker 1: Well, a neighbor across the street, this beautiful ballerina girl
Speaker 1: across the street, and she said, you know, I make
Speaker 1: a lot of money on weekends modeling. And she was
Speaker 1: in ballet school at American Belly School in New York,
Speaker 1: and she said, why don't you come with me to
Speaker 1: my agent. They'd like you. So I went on the
Speaker 1: bus with her, the number thirteen bus, and we went
Speaker 1: to Eileen Ford and I signed up with Eileen Ford
Speaker 1: for a short, short stint. It was, you know, for me,
Speaker 1: kind of frightening but fun. And then Barbara Stone saw me.
Speaker 1: She was at Stuart Models, and she said, oh, you
Speaker 1: must come here, and she and her partners liked me
Speaker 1: a lot and got me really great jobs. And I
Speaker 1: really paid for my way through college with the residuals
Speaker 1: from all the commercials I did. So like at sixteen,
Speaker 1: I was, oh, I did Tarrygent. I had to learn
Speaker 1: how to puff. I've never smoked, but I learned how
Speaker 1: to puff very sexy cigarette Tarrytan with the Black Eye.
Speaker 1: And I did Life Voice soap. I was a married woman.
Speaker 1: I was sixteen years old and I was a married
Speaker 1: woman in the commercial. It was very and we photographed
Speaker 1: it out at Perry Como's house in Shelter Island. Even
Speaker 1: had a house out on Schulter Island or something that's
Speaker 1: so they said it was his house. And I remember
Speaker 1: these days so clearly because it really was kind of
Speaker 1: an important step in my life because I learned how
Speaker 1: to behave in front of a camera and I've been
Speaker 1: doing that ever since that I don't feel self conscious,
Speaker 1: I don't feel angst, nothing, nothing that people talk about.
Speaker 1: It was kind of fun and I also learned, you know,
Speaker 1: what angles and what looks good, what kind of smile,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: So you were you were doing a lot of this
Speaker 2: modeling while you were at Nutley High School. Were the
Speaker 2: other students jealous? Did that create any issue?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think they were jealous. But they
Speaker 1: all watched gun Smoke ause my commercials were running on
Speaker 1: gun Smoke. And that was the number one program at
Speaker 1: the time, and everybody would be glued on Tuesday nights
Speaker 1: to gun smoke and they would laugh laugh at me
Speaker 1: the next day at school. But like I was the
Speaker 1: only girl in the in the trigonometry class, and I
Speaker 1: would you know, it was It was an odd, odd
Speaker 1: time and I was just finding my way. I was
Speaker 1: a good student, very good student. But I and I
Speaker 1: loved my school. I love Notutley High School, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I just loved it. And I used to have the
Speaker 1: whole football team come over for breakfast. You know. My
Speaker 1: mother was very My mother was very kind to whoever
Speaker 1: I brought home. We would bring the teachers home. My
Speaker 1: parents were both teachers, so they appreciated us liking the teachers.
Speaker 1: And my mother always said, the teacher is always right.
Speaker 1: And I still feel that way, and I get so
Speaker 1: depressed when I see how maligned so many teachers are
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 2: And my last guest on this stage also said that
Speaker 2: your parents are always right.
Speaker 1: I ask my daughter, Then.
Speaker 2: You attended Barnard College of Columbia University and apparently turned
Speaker 2: down a scholarship ten.
Speaker 1: Yu, I did. I applied. I wanted to go to
Speaker 1: Stamford in California. I had never been to California. I
Speaker 1: had read about it, and I really wanted to go there.
Speaker 1: And I applied and I got a scholarship. I don't
Speaker 1: even remember now if I got accepted. I don't think
Speaker 1: I did really good. I don't think I really finished
Speaker 1: the application. But I got a full scholarship at NYU
Speaker 1: and a partial scholarship to Barnard. But I went up
Speaker 1: and looked around Barnard and saw it's proximity to Colombia.
Speaker 1: It was such a nice place, and Barnard was very amenable,
Speaker 1: and the president was so great, and so I went
Speaker 1: there and I I major majored in history, economics, and
Speaker 1: architectural history with a lot of miners. I mean, I
Speaker 1: took as many courses as it could possibly take.
Speaker 2: And at that stage studying those things, what was your
Speaker 2: plan or dream that you thought you would do when
Speaker 2: you graduate.
Speaker 1: Well, early on, I didn't know. I was just so
Speaker 1: interested in learning as much as I could about as
Speaker 1: many subjects as I could, taking art classes with a
Speaker 1: great professor, whichcover over. At Columbia, classes were totally open.
Speaker 1: You could go to any class at Columbia and you
Speaker 1: could go to graduate school classes. You could do anything.
Speaker 1: And my favorite place to study was in the architecture
Speaker 1: Library Avery. It was such a beautiful little library and
Speaker 1: I studied there all the time. I don't I didn't
Speaker 1: really think so much about what the career would be.
Speaker 1: I started a toy with the idea of being an architect,
Speaker 1: and because I'm always studying in this architecture library.
Speaker 2: But to make money during college, you also models for Chanel.
Speaker 1: I went to Paris that my agency sent me to
Speaker 1: Paris for a stint, just a Stewart agency. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the summertime, and it was it was so odd because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect. I was studying French,
Speaker 1: so I could speak a little bit of French. They
Speaker 1: put me in the Rue de Journal in the Hotel
Speaker 1: Scundena V. I still remember my room up on the
Speaker 1: fifth floor and walk up and I had so much fun.
Speaker 1: But I got in a line because like one of
Speaker 1: my dresses that I wore to a go see was wrinkled,
Speaker 1: and they called New York and said she came in
Speaker 1: a wrinkled dress. And I never did that again. But
Speaker 1: I did model in some of the shows and I
Speaker 1: had I had really fun, and they had parties every
Speaker 1: single night, and then you would work after the parties
Speaker 1: because all the collections were available only at nighttime because
Speaker 1: they were on the runways during the day. So I
Speaker 1: was doing the photography part. So you start to work
Speaker 1: at two o'clock in the morning. It was it was weird.
Speaker 2: So that was your first trip to Paris. Yes, memorable. Yes,
Speaker 2: you were also on the cover of Glimbor magazine and
Speaker 2: the ten Best Dressed in College issue in August nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was a college I was dressing myself
Speaker 1: in homemade fashion. Do you remember Shaney. No, it was
Speaker 1: a it was a high fashion house right on like
Speaker 1: fifty ninth Street off of Park Avenue. A friend's mother
Speaker 1: who was pardon.
Speaker 2: Bill Cunningham, worked with.
Speaker 1: Oh she did, didn't know that. Oh, anyway, they would
Speaker 1: buy patterns in Paris, so though they were buying Chanel
Speaker 1: and Bent Valenciaga and different patterns lon Van and they
Speaker 1: would bring the patterns home and then make and the
Speaker 1: fabrics and they would make them for their clients here
Speaker 1: in New York. And so I got the patterns and
Speaker 1: so I would be cutting, you know, beautiful dresses. I
Speaker 1: still have a beautiful chanel jacket that I made in
Speaker 1: my in my attic and my archive. And I still
Speaker 1: have one of the beautiful dresses that I made from
Speaker 1: a Lonvan dress which hide with wist. It was very nice,
Speaker 1: complicated and beautiful.
Speaker 2: What did you remember what you wore on the cover
Speaker 2: in the Glamour shoot? No, a hat?
Speaker 1: I think I had a hat, something pinkish, h okay.
Speaker 1: So also it's in the archive.
Speaker 2: Her archive is where we all want to be, okay.
Speaker 2: So while in college you also met Andrew Stewart.
Speaker 1: Oh I did. First. Let me see, the middle of
Speaker 1: the first year. His sister, who was a fashion icon
Speaker 1: the time, married to Stanley Love, the children's dress manufacturers.
Speaker 1: You remember Love dresses. They were always had the backpage
Speaker 1: ad of the New York Times magazine and little cute
Speaker 1: little girl's dresses. And she would be driven every day
Speaker 1: to school in a Rolls Royce that had a cab
Speaker 1: in the front for the driver, and she would sit
Speaker 1: in the back and she was very like, very pitchy toitchy,
Speaker 1: and I thought, God, this is she must be interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to talk to her. And she
Speaker 1: was in a couple of my art classes, art history classes,
Speaker 1: and she came up to me one day and said,
Speaker 1: would I'd like to have a date with her brother,
Speaker 1: who was at Yale Law School, And I said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: She showed me a picture and he looked okay, and
Speaker 1: I said sure, have him call me. And about three
Speaker 1: months later he called and we had a first date
Speaker 1: in New York, went to a restaurant like a Japanese
Speaker 1: early Japanese restaurant, like on fifty sixth Street on the
Speaker 1: East Side, and fell in love. And I I had
Speaker 1: never really dated anybody, seriously, I had never slept with
Speaker 1: anybody either, and we did all that, and it was
Speaker 1: a lot of first and we got out of love
Speaker 1: at first sight. And my father got very upset with
Speaker 1: me for beinging, you know, saying I was going to
Speaker 1: get married. We got married when I was nineteen nineteen, Yeah, nineteen.
Speaker 2: So how many how long did you know him before
Speaker 2: you got married?
Speaker 1: Not not even a year?
Speaker 2: Not even a year?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's the true.
Speaker 2: You kept him waiting at the altar at Saint Paul's Well.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of tribes coming from Nottley, New
Speaker 1: Jersey to Saint Paul's travel and it took a little
Speaker 1: longer than my father anticipated, and we had to find
Speaker 1: a parking spot, you know, and whole thing. And we
Speaker 1: had a very small wedding which I paid for with
Speaker 1: my modeling earnings, even.
Speaker 2: Though he's from this family.
Speaker 1: With bo yes, but you don't those days. The bride
Speaker 1: paid for the wedding and the bride paid for the reception,
Speaker 1: which was at the Barbary Room in the Berkshire Hotel.
Speaker 1: And I had never I had never had a luncheon
Speaker 1: and it was a lunch, and never had a fancy
Speaker 1: lunch and any New York establishment. So I did all
Speaker 1: the planning and they were very nice to us.
Speaker 2: And what was your wedding dress?
Speaker 1: A homemade My mom and I made it. It was
Speaker 1: white Swiss embroidered organdy, a short, very bouffont skirt with
Speaker 1: a tiny and my waist at that time I was
Speaker 1: nineteen and my waist was nineteen. I still have the dress.
Speaker 1: I can prove it. It fit me and a tiny
Speaker 1: little buttons like thirty five little organdy, you know, covered
Speaker 1: buttons down the back, very pretty big sleeves with little
Speaker 1: tiny wrists, and a little pill box hat because at
Speaker 1: that time pillboxes were big and I had my hair
Speaker 1: and upd with a thousand hairpins. I hated that hairdresser
Speaker 1: because then you had to take all the pins out
Speaker 1: while you're on your owage to the honeymoon, you know,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of painful. And where did your
Speaker 1: honeymoon in Vermont? We drove a little yellow Mercedes Sedan.
Speaker 1: I brought my husband's car up to Vermont and stayed
Speaker 1: in little inns or some places on the way. It
Speaker 1: was nice.
Speaker 2: He was scoping at property for later in life. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: So nineteen sixty five it was an important year. You
Speaker 2: gave birth to Alexis Stewart, Yes, who is now fifty
Speaker 2: eight years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she just turned fifty eight, can you believe it?
Speaker 1: And she has two of the most fabulous children, eleven
Speaker 1: and twelve.
Speaker 2: Jude and Truman. Yeah, are you close to them?
Speaker 1: Well, Jude just sent me an agenda for the weekend.
Speaker 1: This girl is twelve. She just started at a new school.
Speaker 1: They were at Avenue School downtown, where they became fluent
Speaker 1: in Mandarin. They're also fluent in Spanish and they are
Speaker 1: she's a dancer at Alvin Ailey and he's a soccer player.
Speaker 1: But she sent me an agenda. Could I please bring
Speaker 1: six friends? A five friends. They're going to be six
Speaker 1: of them on Sunday morning, pick up at eight o'clock
Speaker 1: in the city. And then a list It's a page long,
Speaker 1: this long list of pick apples, make apple cier, make
Speaker 1: apple sauce, make apple pies and tarts to take home.
Speaker 1: And then there is horseback riding, two days, sandwiches, picnic outdoors,
Speaker 1: sleeping in Woodland Cottage which has nobody's ever slept in
Speaker 1: the Woodland Cottage. It's the most remote building on my property.
Speaker 1: And they want to sleep out theres and it's very
Speaker 1: cute and we're going to take pictures.
Speaker 2: But I wonder where she got that from. That was.
Speaker 1: But you know, I had to set up the whole
Speaker 1: cooking school that I mean, this was my Columbus Day weekend.
Speaker 1: I used to go to Maine on Columbus Day and
Speaker 1: take my friends. Now I'm entertaining apple six twelve year
Speaker 1: olds and I haven't even met three of them. Three
Speaker 1: of them I haven't met yet. And their mother's called
Speaker 1: to find out where they're going to be safe and
Speaker 1: where they everything was going to be okay.
Speaker 2: I think they know they'd be saying, but.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they know who I am. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, Judea is very they're very private, these kids.
Speaker 2: Well, and your daughter has said in some print while
Speaker 2: back that she grew up with a glue gun pointed
Speaker 2: at her head.
Speaker 1: I must tell you that she is an amazing designer.
Speaker 1: She makes all of her jewelry, and she makes Jude's
Speaker 1: jewelry now and so yeah, so what she learned how
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: And she's also said, which I find hard to believe,
Speaker 2: that you hate Halloween and would turn off all the
Speaker 2: lights so no one will come trick or treating.
Speaker 1: Well, that was only when I was not happy, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, some Halloweens, I'm happy, and some Halloweens
Speaker 1: I'm not happy. Just look online at Martha Stewart Halloween
Speaker 1: costumes and you will see the most extraordinary lineup of
Speaker 1: Halloween costumes. I have the best Halloween costumes of anybody
Speaker 1: on earth. And so Alexis was not paying attention those years.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this one, you're gonna have the lights on
Speaker 2: this time?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. The horses just went out. I had
Speaker 1: these michonized horses that we sold in Grandon Road. They're
Speaker 1: large skeletons of beautiful horses, and they light up and
Speaker 1: they neigh. They make evil and the driveway and so
Speaker 1: they're already out in the driveway. They got put up today.
Speaker 1: The pumpkins have arrived from the garden and from the
Speaker 1: pumpkin farm, and they're all out there now, and then
Speaker 1: other things will be happening.
Speaker 2: It's Octoberfest at Martha's World. Okay, So then we go
Speaker 2: to sixty seven seventy two. You began your career on
Speaker 2: Wall Street. How did you get your start there?
Speaker 1: I decided after school that I did want a career
Speaker 1: in Wall Street, and I sort of got interested in investing,
Speaker 1: bought some stocks through my father in law, and started
Speaker 1: to learn about American companies, and I thought this would
Speaker 1: be an interesting an interesting place to go. I interviewed
Speaker 1: Merrill Lynch, I interviewed Parker red Path, something that's a
Speaker 1: class Parker and red Path. They were too snotty. And
Speaker 1: then I interviewed a little firm called Pearlberg Moness and
Speaker 1: these go go guys, I mean they were the wild guys.
Speaker 1: That was if you saw Wall Street the movie, this
Speaker 1: was Wall Street times ten, and that appealed to me.
Speaker 1: I just really I really liked that atmosphere because they
Speaker 1: were making a lot of money and they were investing
Speaker 1: in very avant garde companies like McDonald's. Can you imagine McDonald's.
Speaker 1: They were early early investors in McDonald's, which has been
Speaker 1: one of the best investments ever. And they were investing
Speaker 1: in something called Electronic Data Systems EDS. They gave me
Speaker 1: some really difficult clients. They gave me the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Speaker 1: They were really hard. I had to go to Rockefeller
Speaker 1: Center and pitch them stocks. They gave me Fidelity in Boston.
Speaker 1: I had to take the plane up to Boston and
Speaker 1: I one day I my husband said to me and
Speaker 1: I said where were you all day? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I had to fly up to Boston. I took this
Speaker 1: funny little man, he's like right out of the Army,
Speaker 1: Ross Parrot to sell electronic data systems to Fidelity and
Speaker 1: Ross Parrot, I mean he ran for president. Remember he
Speaker 1: invited him and not on the right party, but he
Speaker 1: invited me to his to his acceptance speech when he
Speaker 1: was running. And I had so much fun with him.
Speaker 1: He was really interesting and that company was really interesting.
Speaker 2: Are there many other women there at the time I was.
Speaker 1: There was one other woman called Donna. She was tough.
Speaker 1: She got bitten by a shark and then she stopped
Speaker 1: working a real shark, a shark literally, yeah, yeah, real shark.
Speaker 1: And and these guys were collecting all right, Barbara Nessen's
Speaker 1: were hanging on the wall, and Robert mother Wells. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a wild place, just like the movie. And
Speaker 1: the education that I got was so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ask you what stayed with you from that? What
Speaker 2: did you learn? What was the most important thing you
Speaker 2: learned from that?
Speaker 1: Was good research? Yes, I learned a lot about research
Speaker 1: from Frank Williams, who is still working and still doing stuff,
Speaker 1: and he's just amazing. How important really researching companies like
Speaker 1: researching Tesla. Okay, you have to research these companies before
Speaker 1: you really take a stand on them. And Apple and Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and you can also have a boyfriend who worked at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: That was a good one. That was the good boyfriend.
Speaker 1: And I learned a lot about software, and I learned
Speaker 1: about a lot about Microsoft and about what they do
Speaker 1: and how they do it.
Speaker 2: Were you able to buy those stocks?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, bought everything you know.
Speaker 2: That was a good job. Then Okay, tell us about
Speaker 2: moving to Turkey Hill Road in Westport, Connecticut and restoring
Speaker 2: eighteen oh five house. Was that your first major renovation project.
Speaker 1: Well, we had a little cottage in the Berkshires first,
Speaker 1: and we learned how to do plumbing and carpentry. I
Speaker 1: was a bad carpenter. I was an even worst plumber.
Speaker 1: But I was very good painter, and very good decorator,
Speaker 1: and very good at at finishing things. And you would
Speaker 1: not have liked my kitchen cabinet so much, but I
Speaker 1: did build the entire cabinet cabinet, all the cabinets in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. And this was like a playhouse in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere in Middlefield, Massachusetts, right down the road
Speaker 1: from Glendale Falls. Some friends down the street had a
Speaker 1: TV and we watched our moon landing. That was so exciting,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was a fantastic time, and it
Speaker 1: was a very nice upbringing for my daughter. She loved
Speaker 1: it there and she became a horse of Ventor and
Speaker 1: she it was. It was all very nice. But then
Speaker 1: then Westport, then we bought Westport, Andy, and I we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have gone that far out. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: it was a long commute but actually he was working
Speaker 1: in Greenwich and I was working in New York, so
Speaker 1: the onus was on me to go all the way
Speaker 1: to New York every day. So it was kind of hard.
Speaker 1: But I loved my house. It was an eighteen oh
Speaker 1: five farmhouse, Federal farmhouse. It was complete wreck when we
Speaker 1: bought it on Cheo acres. We bought the next chee acres,
Speaker 1: and then we bought another shoe acres, and so I
Speaker 1: was on six acres, which I transformed into a very
Speaker 1: beautiful garden, which is still extremely beautiful. The new owners,
Speaker 1: the people I sold it to you about twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: have taken amazing good care of the place.
Speaker 2: Was it at this house that I read that you
Speaker 2: reportedly had very risk and nude pool parties.
Speaker 1: I don't know where that comes from. I never had
Speaker 1: a nude pool party ever. I think people swam in
Speaker 1: the nude, but it was not a party.
Speaker 2: Much better. I'll be sure to fix that.
Speaker 1: I want to know where that comes from.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So then was it in that basement In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, you and a model friend, Norma Collier,
Speaker 2: started a catering business.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, norm mccaire, who was also one of the
Speaker 1: ten best dress college girls the year before I was
Speaker 1: and Norm M. Collier was a very sort of stiff
Speaker 1: woman with two kids and a German husband, and she
Speaker 1: was very, very strict, And she and I became partners
Speaker 1: in the Uncatered Affair. That was the name of our
Speaker 1: catering business. She lasted less than a year, and she
Speaker 1: was a good cook, but she did not want to
Speaker 1: work hard like that. That was hard work.
Speaker 2: Do you said Julia Child was a huge influence. Did
Speaker 2: you really cook every recipe in her two volumes?
Speaker 1: I absolutely did, mastering the artifle. And I should have
Speaker 1: been in that movie.
Speaker 2: You should.
Speaker 1: That movie should have happened. Then I would have been
Speaker 1: a much better Julia. Julie Julie. I'm not Julia. I
Speaker 1: would have been Julie Meryl Streep. I could have been
Speaker 1: the student, but I was too old by then.
Speaker 2: Also, with your catering business in nineteen seventy seven, you
Speaker 2: were hired to see the opening party have a gorgeous
Speaker 2: news store in New York called Abitare on fifty seventh
Speaker 2: Street between third and second. Do you remember that.
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was doing the pr at the time.
Speaker 1: Oh you were a time I met you my party. Nice.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a party was beautiful. That It's the
Speaker 2: first time we ever saw tables of cruditay that were
Speaker 2: not just strips of carrots and celery. Everything was in
Speaker 2: you know, there was our chips, cabbages and everything was
Speaker 2: inside the ridicio heads and the cabbage heads. It was gorgeous.
Speaker 2: But you made everybody in the stort crazy. Why because
Speaker 2: you tried to move everything around and you you were
Speaker 2: like making them all nuts. And I remember saying my friends,
Speaker 2: she's never gonna make it in New York. So much
Speaker 2: for my prediction.
Speaker 1: But I did the big party in the armory for
Speaker 1: the Folk Kurt Museum antique show. That was one of
Speaker 1: the funnest parties because I brought in cages of chickens,
Speaker 1: live chickens that were growing, and bales of hay. This
Speaker 1: is before the fire department got smart, and and that
Speaker 1: was that was such a beautiful party and people are
Speaker 1: people still talk about that because it was unusual. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and now it's not so unusual to see live chickens
Speaker 1: walking around in cages and stuff, you know, like cows.
Speaker 1: Cows are at parties now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay. Then Andrew became the president of Harry Abrams
Speaker 2: Publishing and he hired you catering company do a big
Speaker 2: book release for a title that was a very very
Speaker 2: successful book, The Secret Book of Nums.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the first one was Fairies. The party. That
Speaker 1: party was Fairies, and it was by Rune Portfleet of Dutch,
Speaker 1: author and illustrator, and we did the Fairies party, and
Speaker 1: that's where I met That's where I met everybody in publishing.
Speaker 1: I met Alan Murkin, who was running Crown Publishers at
Speaker 1: the time, and what a lovely, lovely man he was,
Speaker 1: and he was walking around looking I had girls dresses Fairies.
Speaker 1: We had it at the US Customs House, which is
Speaker 1: one of the great landmark buildings here in New York,
Speaker 1: way down in the Financial District, and I had every
Speaker 1: All the girls had wings and they had little gossamer
Speaker 1: dresses and serving. We cooked omelets on those little stoves
Speaker 1: all night long. The late party guests we're invited to
Speaker 1: come like at ten o'clock at night and stay until
Speaker 1: two or three. My mother in law decided to do
Speaker 1: the code check and she forgot to give numbers and
Speaker 1: just a little, just a little glitch in the evening
Speaker 1: because nobody could get their coats. It was so horror horrorfic.
Speaker 1: But I remember that was the only bad thing about
Speaker 1: that party. But it was such a beautiful, beautiful party.
Speaker 1: And mister Murk and Allan invited me to come and
Speaker 1: talk to them about doing a book. And that was
Speaker 1: your first big book, And that was my book, Entertaining.
Speaker 2: How many of you have that book?
Speaker 1: I can't see anybody. It was really a story book.
Speaker 1: It was a picture book, and it was a recipe book.
Speaker 1: And I worked on it with a woman called Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Hawes who was married to a crazy guy called Davis Weinstock.
Speaker 2: And your next books were done under the Clarkson Potter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool, that's Crown. Yeah. Clarkson Potter is an
Speaker 1: imprint of Crown Publishers. And I've been with them ever
Speaker 1: since nineteen eighty two, so that's over forty years.
Speaker 2: And that was the same time that a good friend
Speaker 2: of mine who you knew well, Lee Bailey, was doing
Speaker 2: cookbook Oh love. Those were the first real cookbooks with photographs.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the food before that, you never saw pictures
Speaker 2: of the food exactly.
Speaker 1: And Claires and Potter at first when they saw that
Speaker 1: Entertaining and the volume of pictures and texts. They said, well,
Speaker 1: how about black and white? I said, absolutely not. It
Speaker 1: has to be a full color book. It has to
Speaker 1: be a beautiful book in addition to being a useful book.
Speaker 1: And so that's been the whole that's my modus operandi
Speaker 1: in for books. It has to be beautiful, it has
Speaker 1: to be useful, it has to be practical, and you
Speaker 1: have to be able to read it, and you have
Speaker 1: to be able to read it. So we're on the
Speaker 1: hundredth now.
Speaker 2: Well, the books followed Martha Stewart, Quick Cook, Martha Stewart
Speaker 2: or durvs Martha Stewart, Pies and Tarts, Weddings, The Wedding Planner,
Speaker 2: Martha's Do Secrets for Entertaining, Quick Quick cook Menus, Martha's
Speaker 2: Steward Christmas. And now it's up to one hundred books.
Speaker 2: That's pretty Yeah, it's very exciting. One hundred book, come on.
Speaker 2: And that was followed by endless articles in magazine's newspapers,
Speaker 2: TV appearances on Oprah and Larry King. Any of those
Speaker 2: experiences stand out to you as well.
Speaker 1: I still have my first interview on Oprah when she
Speaker 1: was in Baltimore. It was it was so interesting. It's
Speaker 1: so interesting to look at that interview with Oprah then
Speaker 1: and then and see Oprah now. It's it's incredible. And
Speaker 1: the same thing with Rosie O'Donnell was early interviews with
Speaker 1: Rosie and being on her show the whole My life
Speaker 1: has really spanned so many decades that and so many
Speaker 1: interesting things happened in each of those decades, in terms
Speaker 1: of media, in terms of fashion, in terms of just lifestyle,
Speaker 1: evolution of lifestyle. It's been a very interesting, interesting life.
Speaker 2: That's why you're here tonight, thank you. Oh but then
Speaker 2: it kind of that time your marriage was over. You
Speaker 2: separated during the wedding book tour.
Speaker 1: Now take that and that was so cruel. Ugh, it
Speaker 1: was so cruel having to talk about weddings when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a like a not a very
Speaker 1: nice divorce.
Speaker 2: Well that was after twenty six years together. And you
Speaker 2: were quoted in CNN saying and in twenty seventeen quote,
Speaker 2: I had to sacrifice a marriage because of the lore
Speaker 2: of the great job, the fabulous workplace. But I don't
Speaker 2: regret it at all, because what I've done is something
Speaker 2: bigger and better than just one marriage who was nice.
Speaker 1: I must have that's okay, and have to remember to
Speaker 1: look for that one up.
Speaker 2: I'd be a little embroidered on a pillow. I also
Speaker 2: read that you dated Sir Anthony Hopkins for a while
Speaker 2: but broke up because you couldn't stop thinking of him
Speaker 2: as a Hannibal lecter.
Speaker 1: Well, that's true too, because I was introduced to him
Speaker 1: by Tom Cruise when he was still married to Nicole.
Speaker 1: And they took me out to Tom Cruise. That's no,
Speaker 1: that was nice. They took me out to dinner with
Speaker 1: Anthony and Sir Hopkins and out in California, and then
Speaker 1: he took me back to his house. It was a
Speaker 1: nice house, it wasn't great, and and I was staying
Speaker 1: at the Beverly Hills Hotel and and I said I
Speaker 1: had to go back to the hotel because I had
Speaker 1: to work the next morning. And then he said, please,
Speaker 1: you know, come back to come back tomorrow night. And
Speaker 1: he was very nice, very very nice. But then I
Speaker 1: was trying to think if I could possibly invite him
Speaker 1: up to Maine, because I have this large home in Maine,
Speaker 1: and I just couldn't think of having him stay on this,
Speaker 1: like the second floor, because it's too close to Hannibal.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, he's a very good actor. How stupid
Speaker 1: he was. He's a very interesting man. I'm stupid.
Speaker 2: Other famous manudated famous.
Speaker 1: The man who invented word in excel for Microsoft. He
Speaker 1: was number thirteen employee at Microsoft. He's a geek. He's
Speaker 1: his t shirts read eminence geek. And so I should
Speaker 1: have taken that as a but that was fifteen years.
Speaker 1: I duted him for fifteen years. And and he you know,
Speaker 1: he had the he had the boat, he at the plane,
Speaker 1: he had the helicopters, he had you know, all that
Speaker 1: stuff that was a transportation. And then he had the
Speaker 1: transport and and but I actually really was I was
Speaker 1: really very kind, as you put in anything. You know.
Speaker 1: I was a nice, nice person, and I thought he
Speaker 1: should have kids, and I was I was too old
Speaker 1: to have kids at that point. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: I kept encouraging him, you know, have some babies someplace,
Speaker 1: you know. Because so then he he married somebody like
Speaker 1: twenty five years younger than he, of course, and she
Speaker 1: got all the planes and the boats and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, and the babies and the babies.
Speaker 2: Okay. In nineteen ninety you signed with Time Publishing ventures
Speaker 2: to develop a new magazine called Martha Stewart Living that
Speaker 2: started with a base circulation of three hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 2: and it peaked years later at over two million copies
Speaker 2: per issue. Tell us about that magazine, which I loved
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 1: Well, it passes fortieth anniversary, which I was very proud of.
Speaker 1: The magazine was presented first as a book series of books.
Speaker 1: To Clarkson Potter, I said, you know, I'd like to
Speaker 1: write about all other subjects, not just food. And I
Speaker 1: had done food and gardening and weddings, and I thought
Speaker 1: that there are many other categories of lifestyle that I
Speaker 1: could really write about, including collecting, including entertaining, including decorating,
Speaker 1: including just special special life events. And they said, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll just do books. We're planning to do
Speaker 1: books and all those subjects we don't want you just
Speaker 1: to do. I called them the beautiful how to books.
Speaker 1: So then I thought, ah, well, the format that would
Speaker 1: really work for all of this would be a magazine.
Speaker 1: And at the time, in nineteen eighty nine, magazines were
Speaker 1: not doing so well. They were several magazines I think
Speaker 1: for every new magazine, three were closing. And because of
Speaker 1: the advertising at that comment at that time. But I
Speaker 1: went to sign neuhause he gave me he liked the
Speaker 1: idea and he liked the name living, and he gave
Speaker 1: me the money to build a prototype. And I worked
Speaker 1: with jug Turshian and several other really talented people to
Speaker 1: create this beautiful, beautiful prototype magazine. And then when SI
Speaker 1: saw it, and we became friends during the process, so
Speaker 1: I saw it, he said, oh, well, what do you
Speaker 1: want to call it? And I said, well, Martha's Stewart Living.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, this is Condy Nast Martha, and
Speaker 1: it has to be Condy Nest Living. And I said,
Speaker 1: if that's a deal breaker, can I have the prototype?
Speaker 1: And he gave me the prototype, and I went to
Speaker 1: another very powerful, lovely man. I went to succession to Rupert,
Speaker 1: and I first met with his lawyers. I was in
Speaker 1: a room way up high in some building and they're
Speaker 1: all very they're waiting for Rupert to show up, and
Speaker 1: they're all chatting away and being friendly, and they had
Speaker 1: sort of thumbed through the prototype and Rupert came in.
Speaker 1: They all changed totally. I mean, it was just it
Speaker 1: really was like the show. Rupert changed the whole room
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he really had it at that especially
Speaker 1: at that time, this is nineteen eighty nine. He was
Speaker 1: fantastic and he said he looked at it and said,
Speaker 1: I would really like to do this, but I'm selling
Speaker 1: my magazines. I'm you know, seventeen, I just sold and
Speaker 1: I'm selling this and I'm selling that. And he said,
Speaker 1: I suggest you take this to Time. So he gave
Speaker 1: me at least a lead to Time, and so I
Speaker 1: went to Time and met with the CEO and the
Speaker 1: president of Time Magazines and we had lunch at Caravillan
Speaker 1: restaurant and the guys looked through the prototype at lunch
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, this is the July issue. What
Speaker 1: are you going to do next to wy It looks
Speaker 1: like you covered it. And I said, well, you don't
Speaker 1: get it. It's living is limitless. This is a subject
Speaker 1: matter that can go on for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: And they finally bought it, and they but they did.
Speaker 1: I said, if you don't like it after a while,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a piece of paper, what's the price
Speaker 1: for me to get it back? Because it's a fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty kind of partnership. And they wrote down a
Speaker 1: kind of an astronomical sum at the time, but it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a bargain after the few years
Speaker 1: I was there, and I bought it back.
Speaker 2: And how soon after that did Martha Stewart Living become
Speaker 2: a TV show?
Speaker 1: Oh? Pretty soon, right after. I believed in a word
Speaker 1: called synergy. At first time thought that was a dirty word,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, time, you're get with it.
Speaker 1: You know, TV does not cannibalize the magazine. People who
Speaker 1: watch TV don't necessarily buy the magazine, but if they
Speaker 1: get hooked on the TV show, they'll buy the magazine.
Speaker 1: And we had a big arguments about synergy, and the
Speaker 1: synergy went on, and I mean these arguments went on.
Speaker 1: It was real kind of boring after a while. But
Speaker 1: I got a TV show. At first it was a
Speaker 1: weekly once once a week show on CBS. Then it
Speaker 1: went to daily and and that was fantastic in retrospect.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be doing a daily magazine if I were myself,
Speaker 1: if I were still being editor in chief and creator
Speaker 1: of the magazine itself, because you take on you know,
Speaker 1: you just can't balance it all. It's very hard. And
Speaker 1: even though I had a fabulous editor in chief as
Speaker 1: old A Motley who stayed and worked for time. After
Speaker 1: a while, I was always doing too much, but uh,
Speaker 1: but it was great. And then the TV show became
Speaker 1: very successful the and I and I liked doing it
Speaker 1: because I got such great guests on the show. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to be a guest. I mean, Russell Crowe came on,
Speaker 1: you know, what the heck you know? And uh and
Speaker 1: and all in late night hosts came on because they
Speaker 1: loved the show. Everybody did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And when did you start? When did did you
Speaker 2: meet and start working with you? Long time publicist Susan mcgrino.
Speaker 1: Oh, about forty years ago, a little bit more. Susan
Speaker 1: was maybe an associate editor, but she was doing pr
Speaker 1: and marketing at Clarkson Potter. So that's where we met.
Speaker 1: I remember encouraging her. She would go on all the
Speaker 1: book trips with me. I mean we went we went
Speaker 1: to all over the country and we had so much fun.
Speaker 1: When we went down in Mississippi, we stopped in to
Speaker 1: visit on John Grisham and we stopped in we had
Speaker 1: Dome perignyome for breakfast with him. And then we would
Speaker 1: drive around and rented Cadillacs and we had so much
Speaker 1: fun and we still have fun. She went to Paris
Speaker 1: with me this past weekend.
Speaker 2: Just came back trip to Pramez. Yeah, you did mention
Speaker 2: the late night talk shows. I mean you've been on Letterman,
Speaker 2: Fallon seth Meyer, all of those. Often is the one
Speaker 2: that's your favorite?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's like my children. You can never say that,
Speaker 1: they're all so different. I did like messing up David
Speaker 1: Letterman's suit. I was able. They let me pour stuff
Speaker 1: on his suit and they said, nobody's ever been able
Speaker 1: to do that before. And he didn't hit me.
Speaker 2: And then a couple of years later, you were working
Speaker 2: with Sharon Patrick and managed to purchase all your television,
Speaker 2: print and merchandise and ventures related to this, Martha Stewart
Speaker 2: Brand consolidated into a new company which you became chairman, chairwoman,
Speaker 2: CEO and president of Martha Stewart on the Media.
Speaker 1: Arthur Stewart Living on the Media.
Speaker 2: How did that change everything?
Speaker 1: Wow? It was great and the contracts were wonderful. We
Speaker 1: got kmart to approve a contract that allowed us to
Speaker 1: license all the products that we were developing. My theory
Speaker 1: was that if you read the magazine and you get
Speaker 1: all these fantastic ideas everything every I mean, if you
Speaker 1: see a yellow towel in our magazine, you want that towel,
Speaker 1: but you can't make the towel, but you could by
Speaker 1: the towel. So that's how the merchandising started. So omnimedia
Speaker 1: meant in the center. It was the it was like
Speaker 1: a solar system. My business plan was beautiful, it was
Speaker 1: it was the solar system. Middle was content. The first
Speaker 1: little orbit orbit was omnim media. So that was the
Speaker 1: magazines and the books. Then it was omni merchandising the
Speaker 1: products that emanated from all that content. Then it was
Speaker 1: omni Internet because the Internet was just starting. I mean
Speaker 1: Google is just twenty five years old and my magazine's
Speaker 1: forty years old. But in nineteen eighty two I bought
Speaker 1: my first computer, so I knew that computers were going
Speaker 1: to be something special. And it's it's all panned out and.
Speaker 2: Then you went. Then you went public on the New
Speaker 2: York Stock Exchange October nineteen ninety nine, twenty three years ago.
Speaker 2: What was that day like?
Speaker 1: Well, I remember serving croissant and nice drinks to all
Speaker 1: the traders on the floor, and the company went public
Speaker 1: with great eight enthusiasm, and the stock went from eighty
Speaker 1: eighteen dollars a share opening price to about thirty seven
Speaker 1: dollars a year, so we became instant billionaires.
Speaker 2: You were the first female self made billionaire in the
Speaker 2: US BEFO.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I remember. But the funnest thing was I
Speaker 1: remember driving up Madison Avenue and saying, Oh, Josh, I
Speaker 1: could stop anywhere and buy anything today. It was so excited.
Speaker 1: That was exciting. And then I went home and my mom.
Speaker 1: My mom had sold all her stock and she was
Speaker 1: a She was a millionaire at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: She was smart. She sold the stock on the first day,
Speaker 1: but unbeknownst to me, we didn't put it. We didn't
Speaker 1: put a stop gap on her. She was just she
Speaker 1: was very smart.
Speaker 2: But then what happened a couple of years later, You
Speaker 2: got a tip from your broker.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't get a tip, and it was all
Speaker 1: that is old old newsman, and I ran into a
Speaker 1: financial problem and I was accused of lying about and
Speaker 1: lying about a crime I didn't commit. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of convoluted. You're going to have to wait for my documentary,
Speaker 1: which is coming out next year, to learn the real story,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about it. And it was at
Speaker 1: the wrong time. I was in the wrong time at
Speaker 1: the wrong place. Look what's going on in the newspapers
Speaker 1: two day Supreme Court Justice Menendez terms, all.
Speaker 2: Right, so you're not going to tell us about five
Speaker 2: months in a prison in West.
Speaker 1: Oh the five months are It's fine. They were. It
Speaker 1: was like going to camp. It was called it was
Speaker 1: called Camp Alderson. We nicknamed it Camp Olderson. It was
Speaker 1: on the grounds of a all girls private school, like
Speaker 1: a like a junior college in West Virginia, on a
Speaker 1: river polluted by the coal mines. And and it was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. I was in a dormitory. I had
Speaker 1: a roommate. She had the top funk. I had the
Speaker 1: bottom bunk, and she slept with giant curlers in her
Speaker 1: hair every night. And and you were not You were
Speaker 1: allowed three books a week. That's all. You were allowed
Speaker 1: three books from the library. And I managed to get
Speaker 1: more books. There were like things to do at night
Speaker 1: after after dinner. You there was craft classes. There was
Speaker 1: a writing class. There was an entrepreneurial class.
Speaker 2: All these classes.
Speaker 1: No, no, I actually taught entrepreneurial behavior and that. And
Speaker 1: when I got I asked for business plans. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: there were some crazy plants, very interesting, and I helped.
Speaker 1: I helped a lot of women there, and I made
Speaker 1: some nice friends, Sister Carol Gilbert. She was a Catholic
Speaker 1: nun who had been convicted of trespassing on government property
Speaker 1: on a nuclear warhead site out in Colorado. She was
Speaker 1: there for like fifteen years. Horrible, horrible misjustice and injustice
Speaker 1: I learned. I learned a lot about the American penal
Speaker 1: system and how stupid it is.
Speaker 2: But do you remember a visit you had when you
Speaker 2: were there from the designer Ralph Rucci, who's here tonight.
Speaker 2: He managed to smuggle in some frockaf.
Speaker 1: The smuggling stuff worked sort of. I mean, thanks Ralph.
Speaker 1: We love Ralph, we love him. But I had nice visitors.
Speaker 1: Nathan Mervel from Microsoft came down in his private plane
Speaker 1: just to see me and talk. Gil Butler came down
Speaker 1: from New York to talk about my foundation and what
Speaker 1: I should do. I mean, amazing visits. Andy Monest, my
Speaker 1: old stockbroker boss. He came down on the wrong day
Speaker 1: and had to go back. They wouldn't let him see me.
Speaker 1: And you know, stuff like that. Stupid stuff. I got
Speaker 1: put into solitary, which was like a whole way with
Speaker 1: a bench in it for a day because they found
Speaker 1: a hard boiled egg in my room. I made apple
Speaker 1: jelly from the crab apples growing outside our dormitory, and
Speaker 1: and that was okay. They didn't mind that.
Speaker 2: They didn't invite you into the kitchen to cook anything.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, you wouldn't want to be in that kitchen.
Speaker 1: You know, twelve month old eggs and stuff's crazy. But
Speaker 1: I had a friend, Audium, who's was there for not
Speaker 1: telling stories on her boyfriend, and her mother is from Eritrea,
Speaker 1: and she would bring those that soft, beautiful bread, you know,
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian bread stuffed in her bra because it didn't
Speaker 1: show up on the X rays. And we would eat
Speaker 1: that delicious Ungia bread. Oh so good.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that really didn't change a lot in your life,
Speaker 2: because when you came out, they would deals with kmarts,
Speaker 2: years more shows. We're on the Hallmark Channel. You acted
Speaker 2: in Law and Order SVU. You're an ugly betty and
Speaker 2: then you serious exam. You did flooring and furniture collections, wines,
Speaker 2: frozen food with Costco.
Speaker 1: No, it was okay, and because I think people realized
Speaker 1: the enormous of injustice and crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 2: How many different lines do you have or have you had? Licenses?
Speaker 1: Quite a few. I especially love doing the doing the
Speaker 1: home goods, the kitchen wears. We have some beautiful kitchen wears.
Speaker 1: We just started our own Martha store on Amazon, which
Speaker 1: is growing nicely. I was doing a very nice fashion
Speaker 1: line talking about fashion icons on QVC, which did very well.
Speaker 1: I mean, they loved my embroidered jeans. I had peacocks
Speaker 1: on them because of my peacocks and poppy flowers because
Speaker 1: I grow a lot of poppies. We did very nice,
Speaker 1: very nice clothing for QVC, well fitted and well made.
Speaker 1: My downpuffer vest is very popular still. We're now making
Speaker 1: it in leather, which everybody loves. Pleather, not real leather,
Speaker 1: vegan leather.
Speaker 2: And all of this is online.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's online. I'm doing a line of
Speaker 1: sketches which are extremely popular. Commercials are running, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: running all the time. And I'm actually really having some
Speaker 1: influence on the designs and on the actual fabrication. And
Speaker 1: they're very nice, very nice comfortable shoes. Even my male
Speaker 1: friends are wearing them.
Speaker 2: And you got your friend, which we'll talk about. Snoop
Speaker 2: Dogg tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Really, Snoop and I became friends on my program. He
Speaker 1: came to talk about brownies and different recipes a long
Speaker 1: long time ago. And then we were asked. We were
Speaker 1: both asked to be on the Justin Bieber Roast and
Speaker 1: Snoop and I sat next to each other and rebonded,
Speaker 1: and somebody saw our behavior on that roast and asked
Speaker 1: us if we would do a show. We did the
Speaker 1: Martha and Snoop Pop Luck Dinner Party show, which was
Speaker 1: very fun. I got to meet every rapper, every performer
Speaker 1: that I had never dreamed of meeting and talking to
Speaker 1: on that show. We had a great time, and I
Speaker 1: brought I brought unusual foods. I mean I brought mister
Speaker 1: chow on and Snoop had to eat stuff that he
Speaker 1: had never tasted before. He now has two successful cookbooks
Speaker 1: because of me, Yeah, because of me. And he also
Speaker 1: has a line of sketchers.
Speaker 2: And he has a new holiday show coming up.
Speaker 1: Oh he's He's doing a lot of good stuff and
Speaker 1: has a movie coming out to which I cannot wait for.
Speaker 2: And I also read which I'm very excited about you
Speaker 2: creating a healthy cat and dog food line cooperation with
Speaker 2: Chewy Does. Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's just hitting the stores and my dogs love it.
Speaker 1: My cat is a little fussy, but but she she's
Speaker 1: she's she'll like it when she when she gets nothing
Speaker 1: else eat everyst tang has everything. She's the greatest. How
Speaker 1: many animals do you have, Oh, several hundred, because I have.
Speaker 1: I have five horses, five donkeys. Five. I ride the
Speaker 1: horses and the girls are riding on Sunday and Monday.
Speaker 1: We have peacocks. We have all kinds of We have
Speaker 1: the United Nations of geese. We have German geese, we
Speaker 1: have Chinese geese, we have Italian geese, we have French geese,
Speaker 1: the ones with the big livers. And we have American geese.
Speaker 1: And they're beautiful and they're they're all living happily on
Speaker 1: the property.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to Sports Illustrated May twenty three cover
Speaker 2: how did that opportunity come to you and were you
Speaker 2: at all hesitant that being photographed in a bathing suit
Speaker 2: at your age?
Speaker 1: Well? I have My body's pretty good, and you know,
Speaker 1: I work out. I got the call in November. Susan mcgreen. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Susan's called me first and
Speaker 1: warned me that they were going to call. Somebody called me,
Speaker 1: and so I was waiting for Mjday, who's this fabulous editor.
Speaker 1: She's been the editor of the Sports Illustrated magazine for
Speaker 1: quite a while. Young, beautiful and blonde. And she said,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd like you to pose for the swimsuit issue,
Speaker 1: and you want to do that. I mean, for heaven's sake,
Speaker 1: to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated at eighty
Speaker 1: two years old in a bathing suit. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know I had nine pages to do and nine different
Speaker 1: bathing suits. So we get we they she said this,
Speaker 1: in two months, we're going to go down to to
Speaker 1: Cosa de Compo in the Dominican Republic. And it was
Speaker 1: it was fun. I got there on a Thursday night,
Speaker 1: I think it was Wednesday night. Had to try on
Speaker 1: I don't know how many bathing suits, and you know,
Speaker 1: you have to sort of like I had had. I
Speaker 1: had been waxed, I had been sprays hand, I had
Speaker 1: been quaffed and bleached in the whole the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I think I even had my face waxed. I mean
Speaker 1: all kinds of straight. You do all these things, and
Speaker 1: I don't spend a lot of time on that. I
Speaker 1: have to have makeup for TV every day, but I
Speaker 1: don't spend a lot of time doing the other stuff.
Speaker 1: But I do go. I did go to plates. I
Speaker 1: discovered pilates, and I went at least three times a week,
Speaker 1: sometimes four times a week to pilates, and then continued
Speaker 1: to horseback ride and my regular trainer. So I got
Speaker 1: in good shape and it shows in the pictures.
Speaker 2: It totally does truth.
Speaker 1: And you and you, and it's and it's kind of fun,
Speaker 1: I mean, being poked and prodd. And they called them girls.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, for Heaven's sake, you know, let's
Speaker 1: push your girls this way or that. I mean, they
Speaker 1: have a whole different language and a bathing suit. Shoot.
Speaker 2: So is Playboy next?
Speaker 1: Never?
Speaker 2: Okay? We want we won't wait for that? Or what
Speaker 2: about the new TV show on the Bachelor is the
Speaker 2: Golden Bachelor? You can be the Golden Bachelorette?
Speaker 1: No, no, no interest?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, we talked about They.
Speaker 1: Asked me to be dancing in the stars. That kind
Speaker 1: of appealed to me, but I had had to spend
Speaker 1: too much time out west and so I have the business.
Speaker 1: I can't spend that time out in the West Coast.
Speaker 2: A good friend of mine, which is whos usually always
Speaker 2: hear what is out to myight, Jeffrey Banks posted a
Speaker 2: picture of Kevin McCarthy as on Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 1: So that's way way. I was at a dinner and
Speaker 1: this handsome man was sitting two seats for me until
Speaker 1: I realized who it was. It was Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 2: Is it true that your shoe size is twelve?
Speaker 1: Excuse me?
Speaker 2: Your shoe size is a ten ten. Somebody told me
Speaker 2: you size twelve twelve? And do you really have someone
Speaker 2: paint the red bottoms of the Lubaton shoes by.
Speaker 1: Painted with a black sharpie pen because I don't want
Speaker 1: red heels on the I'm red soles on my shoes
Speaker 1: like everybody else.
Speaker 2: Good for you, okay.
Speaker 1: He accosted me about that. He was not happy he
Speaker 1: was on this stage of me.
Speaker 2: He was, okay, okay, And you're doing a new ford
Speaker 2: a line of comfortable gardening clothes with Tractor Supply Company.
Speaker 2: I think that sounds fantastic.
Speaker 1: Very fun. See, because that what do I wear every day.
Speaker 1: I wear that stuff in the garden. I have a big,
Speaker 1: big garden, and I and a big property, and I
Speaker 1: have to wear comfortable clothes and I still have to
Speaker 1: look nice. I remember my daughter when she was at
Speaker 1: greens Farms Academy. She came home one day and she said, mother,
Speaker 1: can I ask you to do one thing? And I said,
Speaker 1: what she said, do not wear your apron to the
Speaker 1: grocery store. Because somebody said and told her that they
Speaker 1: had seen me in an apron. So you have to
Speaker 1: look nice when you go to the grocery store. And
Speaker 1: I want all women to feel comfortable and work well
Speaker 1: and still have you know, have some style.
Speaker 2: That's great. What's your favorite item that you have with
Speaker 2: your name on it?
Speaker 1: Very my square ladle, square ladle. It wasn't that weird.
Speaker 1: It's a ladle. You know, Usually ladle's a round or
Speaker 1: oval or you know, but this is a square one
Speaker 1: with a handle on one side. So it's like when
Speaker 1: you're filling jilly jars you pour out a corner. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so that's one of my very favorite tools. The
Speaker 1: weirdest and the weirdest thing I my name on it. Kevin,
Speaker 1: what a dibber. You need a dibber. My gibber is
Speaker 1: a pointed tool that you pushed down into the ground
Speaker 1: to plant bulbs or little plants, and that's called a jibber.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to some audience questions, but then
Speaker 2: I have two more things to ask you. A question
Speaker 2: from a Ukrainian woman to a Polish woman. Do you
Speaker 2: prefer your Perrogi's boiled, a fried?
Speaker 1: Oh, boiled, always boiled first and then next day warmed
Speaker 1: and brown butter.
Speaker 2: Nice? Okay. What was your most memorable wardrobe malfunction?
Speaker 1: Hmm oh. I went to a dinner at the White
Speaker 1: House and for some stupid reason, I wore a beautiful
Speaker 1: suit by the way Ralph Lauren pink silk chantung suit,
Speaker 1: but it had culots and I got kind of a
Speaker 1: line for wearing coolots to the White House formal dinner.
Speaker 2: What is the best gift you have ever received?
Speaker 1: Best gift was the birth of my child, and the
Speaker 1: second best were the two grandchildren.
Speaker 2: Great. What advice do you have for any aspiring entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: watching or listening to you tonight?
Speaker 1: If you have a good idea and you have a
Speaker 1: passion for that idea, take it to the next level.
Speaker 1: Build a business plan, be serious, know that the work
Speaker 1: is all ahead of you, that business plans easy compared
Speaker 1: to what comes afterward. And go for it. I think
Speaker 1: going for it is like the best thing that you
Speaker 1: could possibly ever do.
Speaker 2: I'd like to end tonight's talk with something that you
Speaker 2: said to Booth Moore from Women's With Daily and a
Speaker 2: talk during the Magic Show in Vegas, And this is
Speaker 2: a quote from you. You must really assume an authentic personality.
Speaker 2: You must be authentic to yourself and to the public.
Speaker 2: You must learn every day so that you can teach
Speaker 2: every day. I am a teacher. I don't think of
Speaker 2: reinvention as much as I think of evolution. I want
Speaker 2: to evolve and evolve and get better and not stay
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 1: And that's the truth.
Speaker 2: That's the truth.
Speaker 1: That is the truth.
Speaker 2: And tonight we had a masterclass from the best teacher
Speaker 2: in the world. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: That is so nice.