“Instead of celebrating our 50th anniversary (yikes!) just on the day, Jeffrey and I decided to celebrate it all week long!” the bubbly Barefoot Contessa star Ina Garten shared on Dec. 18. And as the couple approached their Dec. 22 milestone, Ina, 70, revealed the secret ingredient to their happy marriage.

“Chicken always helps,” she recently joked to Today, and added during a previous interview, “The best way you can express love by cooking for someone is, figure out what they like and make it for them. And they’ll feel really good!”

Still, she admitted that meeting Jeffrey, 72, was “just the luck of the draw. I think you marry someone who thinks you’re the most important thing in the world, and you think he’s the most important thing in the world. It’s that simple, isn’t it? People make it so complicated.” As Ina often says, how easy is that?

Ina recalled meeting Jeffrey when she was just 15 years old during a visit to Dartmouth College, and once she got to know Jeffrey, she knew 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 gushed.

On Today, she also gave a little bit of helpful advice to make a relationship last. She said, “If you take care of somebody and don’t worry about [it, then] they’re gonna take care of you, they will. Rather than demanding attention, by giving attention, you get attention back. It’s actually simpler than you think.”

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First day back in Paris! #happyhubby

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After 50 years, Ina and Jeffrey still prove that a marriage can be successful with a little bit of love and support and Ina shows just how much she adores Jeffrey by cooking for him. She joked about trying out all of her new recipes on her husband. “I think every time I test a new recipe and I give it to him and he goes, ‘This is the best thing I ever had.’ So I can say all of them are!” she said. How sweet!