Martha Stewart on losing her virginity at 19: “He was very aggressive”

Martha Stewart fell in love with her ex-husband Andy Stewart on their first date.

in New Netflix documentary Martha, The culinary icon recalls meeting Andy when she was a student at Barnard College in New York and he was in law school at Yale University. The couple started dating after they were set up by Martha’s classmate and Andy’s sister.

“He picked me up in his little yellow Mercedes sedan,” she recalls in the film. “I’ve never been in a Mercedes before.”

Martha, 83, raised one of six children in Nutley, New Jersey. The popular tall blonde spent her teenage years modeling to provide extra income for her parents, “Big Martha”, a school teacher, and Edward, a failed businessman.

Martha recalls going out to dinner with Andy on their first date when she was 19. “He was very polite and handsome and he had traveled a lot. It was interesting to meet a sophisticated young man. And he had an American Express card, which was a big deal in those days,” she says.

When the pair met, Martha found Andy “intriguing, playful and sweet” and by the end of the dinner she was “madly in love”. Martha says that Andy began sending her money every week for a train ticket to visit him in New Haven, Connecticut.

“I’ve never slept with anyone before,” she says. “He was very aggressive and I liked that.”

When Andy proposed, Martha says marriage seemed “such a natural thing to do.” But her father did not approve of the relationship. “I went home and told my dad about it, and he slapped me,” she recalls. And he slapped me hard in the face and said, “No.” You will not marry him. He is a Jew.”

“I remember being slapped,” Marta continues. “I wasn’t surprised at all because he was a fanatic and he was impulsive.” Martha says she told her father, “I’m going to get married, no matter what you think.”

She made her own wedding dress for her wedding in 1961 and gave birth to a daughter, Alexis, four years later.

“The wedding day was very happy,” she says. “Very well. It was the beginning of my life.”

The documentary also details infidelity in their marriage, revealing that both she and Andy had affairs. Martha recalls kissing a “very handsome guy” in Florence’s Duomo on her honeymoon and a “very brief affair” with a “very attractive Irishman” when she was working as a stockbroker in the late 60s.

“It was nothing,” she insists. “I would never end my marriage for this.”

Andy told producers that he “wasn’t crazy” until she did. “I don’t know how many different girlfriends he had during that time, but I think there were quite a few,” says Marta, noting that one affair was on the territory of the spouses in Westport, Connecticut, when she wrote cookbooks.

Martha and Andy divorced in 1990 and did not speak for more than 20 years.

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Martha told PEOPLE in 2020 that her divorce was difficult for her.

“The divorce was a terrible thing for me because we were the first in my family to divorce,” she said. “And the fact that we didn’t talk after the divorce is even more painful. But I am very strong and I am very motivated to get on with life.”

Marta now streaming on Netflix.