Ina Garten Reveals Why Oprah Winfrey 'Smacked' Her Twice After She Gave a Speech: 'She Was Right'

Ina Garten sheds light on the “shocking” moment she shared with Oprah Winfrey that still haunts her.

Radio Cherry Bomb host Kerry Diamond asked Garten, 76, about that moment — which he reveals in his upcoming memoir, Be ready when luck strikes — in the last episode of the podcast.

“It was very nice,” the Barefoot Contessa asterisk added before entering the exchange since 2010.

That year, Garten received one of the New York Women In Communications’ Matrix Awards, the organization’s annual honor that honors “outstanding women in the fields of advertising, books, broadcasting, film, magazines, new media, newspapers and public relations,” according to her website.

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While accepting the honor alongside Sheryl Crow, Tina Fey and others, Garten said she found herself on stage next to Winfrey, 70, who was there to introduce another recipient: longtime friend Gayle King.

Ina Garten receives the 2010 Matrix Award from New York Women In Communications.

EUGENE MIM/Patrick McMullan via Getty

Garten and her fellow honorees were each given 90 seconds to give their acceptance speeches, which, Garten said, “is about all I can take without completely breaking down.”

“I basically said I’ve been lucky in life and sat down,” the chef explained. “AND [Winfrey] he slapped my hand in front of about 2,000 people and said, ‘You make your own luck’.”

Unconvinced, Garten told Diamond that she doubled down on Winfrey, insisting that she owes much of her career to luck.

“I said, ‘Well, I’ve actually been incredibly lucky.’ And then she slapped me again,” Garten recalled with a laugh. “And I said, ‘Okay.'”

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More than a decade after Winfrey schooled her, Garten understood her point. “Many years later when I was writing this memoir, I thought, ‘She was kind of right.’ “I got the job done,” Garten said.

“I have to give her credit,” she added. “She was right.”

Garten reflected on her happiness so much that it inspired the title of her memoir, Be ready when luck strikes.

“I always felt like I was really lucky, and looking back and connecting the dots by writing the memoir, I realized that I actually worked a lot to be ready,” she told PEOPLE for her September cover story.

Be ready when luck strikes, Ina Garten.

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Garten’s story about Winfrey is just one of the many previously untold moments the chef reveals in the book — which, admittedly, she never thought she’d write.

“I just didn’t think anyone would be that interested in my life,” she told PEOPLE.

But after persuasion from friends and co-workers, she took the plunge, and it ended up being “really fun to do,” Garten said. “I wasn’t scared at all, but the thought of sending it out into the world is a whole different story.”

Be ready when luck strikes is now available.

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Source: HIS Education