The Truth About Ina Garten's Friendship With Taylor Swift

We all know that the internet is obsessed with figuring out the story behind every one of Ina Garten's cookbooks. The chef and domestic goddess has been linked to so many famous faces it's hard to keep up; who is she friends with now? Who did she write that recipe about? Will she ever find real happiness? Well, call off the search, guys. We are happy to report that Garten is in one of the most fulfilling, committed, grown-up relationships of her life, and it's with a young woman named Taylor Swift.

Garten and Swift have been public about their friendship for a long time now. According to E!, the pair met on a photo shoot for Food Network, which matched a celebrity chef with a regular old run-of-the-mill celebrity for a bit of cooking. Garten and Swift clicked instantly. "I was so flattered that she chose to work with me," Garten told People in 2016. "We did this photo shoot together which was just one of the fun days of my life. It was just unbelievable." A PDA in the form of an Instagram post on Garten's account soon followed, and Garteners (what fans of the chef probably call themselves) everywhere breathed a sigh of relief: Their Barefoot Contessa had finally found true platonic love.

While every friendship has some tension, the truth about Ina Garten's friendship with Taylor Swift is that it's every bit as magical as it looks. "I'm not sure that my life is that dramatic," Garten told ELLE in 2018, when she was asked whether she would write a memoir anytime soon. The chef is admittedly a homebody, happiest when she is cooking for family and friends at her estate in the Hamptons. "I could not leave the house for a year and be perfectly happy," she explained, in a quote that has aged a little too well.

And if Garten's life was already a bowl of cherries, Swift is the cherry on top...of those cherries. "She's very smart and very interesting and she loves her friends," Garten gushes about her gal pal (via HuffPost). "She is wise beyond her years to say the least. Just extraordinary." For Swift, who is admittedly doing quite well for herself in pursuing a musical career, the feeling appears to be mutual. The world-famous artist told ELLE in 2019 that Garten's spaghetti and meatballs recipe is one that "I know I'll be making at dinner parties for life." Hopefully with Garten at her side, grating the Parmesan.