biography

One might think that the queen of gracious living may have grown up in the type of surroundings we are used of seeing her in. The truth is that she was born August 3rd, 1941, in the industrial city of Jersey City, New Jersey, which is known for it's heavy industry rather than rustic charm. Her father Edward Kostyra, a pharmaceutical salesman, and mother Martha Kostyra, a schoolteacher, moved the family to Nutely, New Jersey when Martha was 3. There she grew up with her four siblings in a close-knit Polish-American family.

Martha's father began to teach her gardening at the age of 3 and her mother taught her to cook, bake, and sew. Her next door neighbors (retired bakers), furthered her domestic teachings by showing her the art of bakeing pies and cakes. She was a hardworking, serious child who received straight A's in school. She won a partial scholarship to Barnard College in New York City and worked as a model to make ends meet. She entered college intending to study chemistry, but switched to European and architectural history. In her sophomore year she married law student Andrew Stewart.

She continued modeling and TV commercials after graduation, but quite in 1965, after her daughter was born. Her second career began in 1967 as a stockbroker in her father-in-laws firm. Although successful, Martha left the brokerage when the recession hit Wall Street in 1973.

The Stewarts moved to Westport, Connecticut and undertook an rigorous restoration of a 1805 farmhouse (the same house seen in her programs). Her next career began in 1976 when she started a catering business. She ran the business out of the basement of her house and with in 10 years it developed into a million dollar enterprise and also opened a specialty food store in Westport.

She wrote for the New York Times and was an editor and columnist for House Beautiful magazine. In 1982, Martha published the first of what would become a string of extravagantly illustrated books. The book "Entertaining" would make Martha Stewart a one-woman industry. She was soon producing vidoe's, dinner-music CD's, and just about anything that had to do with entertaining guests and making your 'house (and garden) beautiful'.

Her regular appearances on the Today show made Martha Stewart a household name. She then signed with Kmart for a reported $5 million as an advertising and consultant. She was contributing editor to Family Circle magazine for most of the '80's before starting her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Her magazine attained a circulation of 1.3 million readers.

Appearing in many cable and television specials she started a syndicated TV show of her own, "Martha Stewart Living," in 1993.

Martha Stewart has single-handedly had more influence of how North Americans entertain, decorate their homes and gardens and eat than any other person in our history. Her already colossal and extraordinary chain of enterprises is still growing.