In a recent episode of Oprah Winfrey’s eponymous podcast, Ina Garten discussed the title of her memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” which was inspired by a particularly memorable interaction with Winfrey that took place in 2010.
“I did remember having a discussion, but I didn't remember slapping you,” Winfrey said while conversing with Garten on Tuesday’s episode.
“Maybe it was a love tap,” Garten said. “You were like, ‘Woah, you make your own luck.’ And I was like, ‘No, I've just been really lucky.’”
“In my mind, you were already an iconic figure and a powerful woman. In your acceptance speech, you mentioned luck and luck and luck,” Winfrey said. “I come from the belief that luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.”
Garten concludes her memoir, recounting the specific incident that took place shortly after she got on stage to receive the Matrix Award for Women in Media.
“I spoke about how lucky I was at each phase of my career because it seemed whatever I was most interested in doing was exactly what the world wanted at the time,” she writes of her acceptance speech. “I was lucky that I was interested in food and cookbooks at a time when the world was interested in food and cookbooks. I was lucky that Food Network was looking for home cooks when they found me, and lucky that they refused to take no for an answer. Lucky.”
Garten wrote that she then sat “right next to Oprah.” Their brief conversation would later have a profound effect on her.
“Immediately, she turned and smacked me on the arm, saying, ‘You weren’t lucky. You make your own luck,’” Garten recalls Winfrey telling her. “‘Actually, I have been lucky,’ I started to say,” she writes. “And then she smacked me again.”
“Did Oprah just smack me in front of a thousand people?” Garten says she asked herself.
Garten adds that Lesley Stahl then got up on stage and referenced Garten’s conversation with Winfrey while introducing the next guest on stage. “Why do successful women always say they’re lucky, and successful men say they got there by the force of their talent?” Stahl said, per Garten.
“Wait? Did Lesley Stahl just smack me, too?” she writes.
Weeks later, Garten says the topic of luck came up again when she learned about the time Liza Minelli told a 23-year-old Rob Marshall to “Be ready when the luck happens.” Her memoir, she writes, ultimately tells a story about “hard work and luck.”
Garten says she focuses “on what’s in front of me and work[s] hard because I love what I do, and I have fun doing it.”
“And then I leave the door open, so I’ll be ready when the luck happens,” she concludes her memoir.
