For Ina Garten's fans, the story of Jeffrey Garten's life might have begun the day he spied her on campus of Dartmouth University, not as a student, but the 15-year-old younger sister of a friend. "Look at that girl, isn't she beautiful?" he said of Ina Rosenberg (via Food Network). But he had a life before he set eyes on his future wife, and most of what we know comes from an interview he granted to Johns Hopkins Magazine, which was published in 2016.

Garten was born into a military family, the younger of two boys. His father might have been low-key, but the elder Garten, who passed away in 2015, was a decorated military veteran who served across three wars and picked up a number of medals, including a Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, five Purple Hearts, the Legion of Merit, two Joint Commendation Medals, and two Air Medals. Garten says he remained in the dark about his father's own military career and his heroism until much later, which is no surprise, because as he said in 2016, "Anyone who came into our house, if they didn't know he was in the military, they would have never known he was this decorated soldier."