Ina Garten Celebrates Husband Jeffrey's 75th Birthday with Sweet Post: 'Love of My Life'

"I've loved you for more than 50 years and I'm just getting started," wrote the Food Network star

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Published on October 29, 2021 05:43 PM

Happy birthday Jeffrey!

Ina Garten marked her husband's 75th birthday with an Instagram post that will make you believe in true love. In the caption, the Food Network star wrote, "Happy Birthday to the love of my life! I've loved you for more than 50 years and I'm just getting started. 🎂🎂🎂"

Along with the caption, the Barefoot Contessa star posted several pictures of Jeffrey, ranging from childhood images, pictures of the couple when he was in the Army and current solo shots of her husband.

The couple first met in 1963 when Garten was 15 and visiting her brother at Dartmouth College, where Jeffrey was also a student. The pair tied the knot in December 1968, when she was 20 and he was 22.

Soon after saying "I do," Jeffrey was sent on an Army deployment to Thailand. "I wrote to Ina every single day," he told PEOPLE in 2018. "During the whole year, I was only able to call her once."

Ina saved all the letters. "I was recently reading through them, and I came across one that said, 'I'd love to take you to Paris, and we won't have enough money for a hotel, but maybe we'll go camping,'" Ina recalled with a laugh.

Following Jeffrey's deployment, the couple went on that Parisian camping trip. In a recent interview, Ina credited her cooking passion to a French chicken dish the pair ate while on the four-month adventure in France when they were newlyweds.

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Even now, despite the couple's busy lives, Ina and Jeffrey still travel to Paris every year to celebrate their anniversary.

"We've had the good fortune of growing up together in a very compatible way," Jeffrey told PEOPLE in a previous interview. "We're like two vines that grew and wrapped themselves around one another."