Martha Stewart, 83, revealed in an October interview that she hasn’t talked to her ex-husband Andrew “Andy” Stewart in over 20 years.
Martha Stewart married Andy Stewart in 1961 when she was 19 and studying at Barnard College, while he attended Yale Law School.
The couple separated in 1987 and divorced in 1990.
When asked if Andy had seen her new Netflix documentary Martha, which comes out on October 30, she said she wasn’t sure given how long it’s been.
“Young women, listen to my advice,” she says with confidence and certainty in the documentary trailer. “You’re married, and your husband starts to cheat on you. He’s a piece of sh–. Get out of that marriage.”
The remark about infidelity cut to the heart of her decades-long union with Andy.
When a producer asked, “Didn’t you have an affair early on?” Martha’s veneer of authority seemed to falter as she said, “I — don’t think Andy ever knew about that.”
During their marriage, Martha says Andrew began an affair with her assistant, Robyn Fairclough, who was living on the property, and in letters featured in the documentary, she described how pained she was by his infidelity, saying “I am agonizingly jealous of your other women… I’m worried and lonely, alone, hopeless.”
Martha also disclosed her own transgressions.
“I had a very brief affair with a very attractive Irish man. And, um, it was just nothing,” she said.
“He’s the one who wanted the divorce. Not I. He was throwing me away. I was 40 years old. I was gorgeous. I was a desirous woman, but he was treating me like a castaway,” she said.
“He treated me really badly, and, in return, I guess I treated him badly.”
Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE at the New York premiere of her Netflix documentary Martha in October, the entrepreneur revealed that she hasn’t spoken to her ex-husband in over 20 years and they share daughter Alexis Stewart, who was born in 1965.
Andy and his current wife pushed back quickly.
“As some of you know, my husband is Andrew Stewart – brilliant publisher, avocational naturalist and nature photographer, and one of the gentlest, most soft-spoken, kind-hearted men I’ve ever known,” Shyla wrote in an October Facebook post.
“No one was more surprised than we when, after being introduced as colleagues almost 12 years ago, our connection blossomed into a deep and everlasting love,” the message continued.
“Prior to this happy chapter of his life, Andy had some dark ones, including a painful and abusive marriage to Martha, which ended almost 40 years ago,” Nelson Stewart continued.
Shyla specifically challenged the documentary’s framing.
“While Andy quietly moved on and forward with his life, it appears that Martha continues to publicly relitigate the marriage, including comments in a sensationalized trailer for an upcoming documentary on Netflix.”
“Every day, we openly express our gratitude for our love and for our life together. We both wish everyone, including Martha herself, the experience of loving and being loved deeply and fully, and the peace that comes from such a love,” she concluded in the post.
In the viral moment from the documentary trailer, Martha dispensed sharp advice to younger women about handling infidelity in marriage, contrasting her public stance with her own private indiscretions that she’d kept hidden for decades.
Andy worked in publishing and served as chief executive of Harry N. Abrams before founding his own house, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, and is now publisher emeritus of Fieldstone Publishing.
Andrew ultimately left Martha and the pair finalized their divorce in 1993, then went on to wed her former assistant Robyn Fairclough, before eventually divorcing and remarrying to Shyla Nelson Stewart, a publishing executive, around 2016.
After the marital split, he obtained a court order prohibiting Martha from communicating with him at all, save for their respective attorneys.
Martha’s Netflix documentary Martha is now streaming on Netflix.