Early Life
Martha Stewart was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. She is the second of six children born to middle-class Polish Americans Edward "Eddie" Kostyra (1912–1979) and Martha Ruszkowski Kostyra (1914–2007). When Stewart was three years old, the family moved to Nutley. She adopted the name "Grace" for her confirmation name.
When Stewart was ten years old, she worked as the occasional babysitter for the children of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Gil McDougald, all athletes for New York Yankees. Micky and Merlyn Mantle had four sons, who Stewart watched and organized birthday parties for. She also began modeling. At the age of fifteen, Stewart was featured in a television commercial for Unilever.
Stewart's mother taught her how to cook and sew. Later, she learned the processes of canning and preserving when she visited her grandparents' home in Buffalo, New York. Her father had a passion for gardening and passed on much of his knowledge and expertise to his daughter. Stewart was also active in many extracurricular activities, such as the school newspaper and the Art Club. During this time, Stewart began a modeling career. She appeared in several television commercials and magazines, including one of Tareyton's famous "Smokers would rather fight than switch!" cigarette advertisements.
Stewart graduated from Nutley High School. She originally planned to attend Barnard College with a major in chemistry. She switched to art, European History, and later architectural history. During this time, she met Andrew Stewart, who finished his law degree at Yale Law School. They married in 1961. She returned to Barnard a year after their marriage to graduate with a double major in History and Architectural History.
Read more about this topic: Martha Stewart
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
—William Barrett (b. 1913)