Martha Stewart opened up about the messiness of her marriage for her new Netflix documentary, Martha.
The 83-year-old lifestyle personality and author was married to Andrew "Andy" Stewart from 1961 and 1990. Stewart says Andy cheated on her with a former employee whom she allowed to temporarily stay on the couple's property.
One was a former employee of Stewart whom she allowed to temporarily stay at a barn on the couple's property, Turkey Hill Farm in Westport, Connecticut. Martha’s friend Kathy Tatlock said that she'd heard rumors about Andy having "some sort of involvement with the girl who was doing the flower arrangements" at the home.
"When I was traveling, Andy started up with her," Stewart recalled. "It was like I put out a snack for Andy."
Andy insisted to producers that he "didn't stray" until Stewart had, but this didn't stop the author of Martha: The Cookbook from detailing her perspective about the affair.
"I kicked her out immediately," Stewart said of her former employee. "You know, 'What the hell are you doing?'"
She continued, "Andy betrayed me, right on our property. Not nice."
Andy wasn't the only one in the couple who looked outside their marriage.
Early in the documentary, People noted, Stewart recalled that she once kissed a "very handsome guy" while at Florence Cathedral in Italy. The Stewarts were on their European honeymoon at the time, and Andy was in their hotel.
"He didn’t know I was married," Stewart said about the tryst. "I was this waif of a girl hanging out in the cathedral on Easter Eve. He was emotional. I was emotional. It’s just because it was an emotional place. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced."
Another casual fling, or "very brief affair," that Stewart had was with a "very attractive Irish man" in the late '60s while the businesswoman was working as a stockbroker.
"It was nothing," Stewart said about the situation. "I would never have broken up a marriage for it."
She added that Andy, however, "was not satisfied at home." She said she didn't know the exact number of "many different girlfriends" her ex-husband had, although there were "quite a few."
While chatting with Martha director R.J. Cutler, she also shared a previous letter that she wrote to Andy, expressing that she was "agonizingly jealous" of his "other women."
In terms of their divorce, Stewart pointed the finger at Andy, who has remarried twice since their split.
"He’s the one who wanted the divorce, not I," Stewart said. "He was throwing me away. I was 40 years old. I was gorgeous. You know, I was a desirous woman. But he was treating me like a castaway. He treated me really badly. And in return, I guess I treated him badly."
In the documentary trailer, Stewart urged women to leave their spouses if they're being taken for granted.
"Young women, listen to my advice, if you’re married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he’s a piece of shit,” Stewart warns around the 30-second mark of the trailer. "Get out of that marriage."
"Didn’t you have an affair early on?" an off-camera producer asks.
"Yeah, but I don’t think Andy ever knew about that," Stewart confessed.
When Lee Brian Schrager asked Stewart during the launch of her 100th cookbook how she was able to keep her own affairs under wraps, Stewart answered that it was "very easy."
"You have to be circumspect," she said.
