She’s known to the world as “The Barefoot Contessa”, but in real life, Ina Garten isn’t just a celebrity chef. She is a happily married wife and has reached a huge milestone with her husband Jeffrey. Although her fans know Jeffrey as the adorable guy who appears every now and then on the show to say, “Oh this is delicious.” But Ina says he’s much more than that.

The duo are celebrating their diamond 50th anniversary this month and Ina has been sharing her joy about the occasion with her fans by posting throwback photos on her social media page. Ina, now 70, and Jeffrey, 71, met when she went to visit her brother in college. She says they had an instant connection, although she was just 15 at the time.

She says she knew that moment that he was the one. “He’s kind, he’s smart, he’s funny, and he takes very good care of me. It’s wonderful,” she says.

Every day this week the cookbook maven has shared a vintage photo of the two of them and says she will keep sharing photos throughout the week until their anniversary which officially takes place on Saturday.

It was Jeffrey who encouraged Ina to jump into a career in the food industry. She had been working as a policy adviser at the White House and he told her to quit the job and dive into her passion for cooking instead.

She says he is the only person that believed in her and thought she was smart enough to accomplish anything she wanted to. “He was the first person I knew who thought that about me,” she says. Ina says that there isn’t a secret to finding the love of your life. Jeffrey has come up multiple times in interviews over the years, but Ina says she thinks it is just luck of the draw.

She says she thinks we need to marry someone who thinks we’re important and you need to think that they are important too. “It’s that simple isn’t it? People make it so complicated,” she says.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to show someone how you feel by cooking them a nice meal. “I think the best way you can express love by cooking for someone is to figure out what they like and make it for them,” said Ina.

Even though Jeffrey is a dean at the Yale School of Management and the couple live in different cities and only see each other on the weekends,  they say they are as close as ever after having spent five decades together.

They plan to celebrate their anniversary with a trip to Paris, the city that they fell in love with while camping around Europe together back in the 1970’s.

How romantic is that? True love really is still alive. Be sure to share this heartwarming story with your family and friends, and be sure to wish Ina and Jeffrey many more years together.