EXCLUSIVEMartha Stewarts siblings say their childhood was not the TV-happy family she may portray in her upcoming Netflix documentary: It was actually chaos
Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who wrote the revelatory biography of Martha Stewart, Just Desserts.
Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who wrote the revelatory biography of Martha Stewart, Just Desserts.
Martha Stewart gets the chance this week finally to set the record straight about her hardscrabble childhood.
But the question is whether she will use the Netflix documentary of her life to tell the truth or will she continue the fiction that growing up for her was like an episode of her favorite 50s TV show, Father Knows Best.
As detailed in my New York Times bestselling biography of Martha, Just Desserts, growing up as Martha Kostyra in blue-collar Nutley, New Jersey, her family life was largely a dysfunctional mess.
Life with five siblings – three brothers and two sisters – in a tiny three-bedroom, one bath home on a postage stamp lot and ruled by an often angry and mean-spirited father, could be hell on earth.
Will she or wont she? Martha Stewart – who attended the premiere for her Netflix documentary Martha at The Paris Theater on October 21 – may finally open up about her turbulent childhood
Marthas parents and her siblings – from left Frank, Kathryn, Martha, Laura, Erik, and George – all lived in a tiny three-bedroom, one bath home on a postage stamp lot
In her popular magazine, which was last published in 2022, Stewart portrayed her upbringing as a picture-perfect rather than what her siblings have said was the truth
But you would never know it from her once popular magazine, Martha Stewart Living or in her bestselling first book, Entertaining.
Instead you would think that life in Nutley was like a Norman Rockwell come to life – a perfect gingerbread family.
In theN etflix documentary, due to air Wednesday, Martha, now 83, is the only interview subject on camera.
A preview shows Martha boasting that she secretly cheated on her one and only husband, publisher Andy Stewart, during their turbulent marriage that ended in divorce in 1990 after 29 years.
She also deals angrily with her felony conviction for insider trading and her confinement for five months, among her other career and personal ups and downs.
Much of her story is well-known. She once even said of her life, There are no skeletons. There are no secrets.
But that is far from the truth.
Marthas father was handsome, blue-eyed and blond. Edward Kostyra was a one-time Jersey City public high school phys-ed teacher. Marthas mother – also called Martha – was a plain-looking housewife with a teaching degree, the daughter of a Polish immigrant iron worker.
A preview shows Martha boasting that she secretly cheated on her husband, publisher Andy Stewart, during their turbulent marriage that ended in divorce in 1990
Martha was the second born of the six Kostyra siblings
Martha was the second born of the six young Kostyras. Besides her there was Kathy, Laura, Eric, Frank and George; Eric came first.
One longtime secret was revealed by Eric at a family event; he disclosed, to the horror of all, that he had been conceived out of wedlock.
Marthas aunt Estelle Burke was in a state of shock, she told me. I kept that secret from the time my brother Eddie and Martha Sr. were married. I never told anybody.
Jerry Oppenheimer was interviewed for the film as a producer told him his book was the go-to Martha biography, but he did not make the final cut
But Martha let the cat out of the bag when she wrote in her magazine with its 1.2 million readers: Our parents had eloped before the real wedding, and Mother was actually pregnant when she had the formal ceremony.
As Burke, told me, My feeling is Martha will do anything to feather her own nest. Who got benefit from that? Nobody except Martha Stewart.
According to Marthas brother, Eric, their father, Eddie, was always coddled by his mother. But his paternal grandfather - a tavern owner - was stern. As Eric revealed, He would hold a lit cigarette under Marthas fathers elbow to force him to keep his arm up when he was practicing his violin…That was grandfather.
During World War II, Eddie worked in a federal shipyard and dry dock in Kearny, New Jersey, performing defense work.
But when his second son, Frank, asked him what he did in the war, his father told him he was in the cavalry, and it was his duty to patrol, he said.
Some went [to war] some didnt. I was chosen not to go. But, said Frank, it was never explicit why he didnt go overseas.
In the fall of 1944, with an $8,000 loan from his mother, Eddie Kostyra made a down payment on an asbestos-sided two-story, three-bedroom, one bath Depression-era house with a full basement and an unfinished attic at 86 Elm Place in Nutley.
The Kostyra home was a far cry from the mansions in Connecticut and in New Yorks Hamptons where Martha went on to live. And Elm Place would not be a happy place.
Marthas father was in and out of jobs that often led to an uncontrolled fury on his part – an anger that verged on abuse.
According to my interviews with Marthas brother, Frank, Dad was physical with us. He had a fiery temper, and when we misbehaved or got out of line, we got the stick or the belt.
Martha wrote in her magazine: Our parents had eloped before the real wedding, and Mother was actually pregnant when she had the formal ceremony. This outraged her family who felt she should not have aired that publicly
Marthas mother – also called Martha – died in 2007 aged 93. She ofter appeared onscreen with her famous daughter
Stewarts documentary preview shows her angrily dealing with her felony conviction for insider trading and her confinement for five months
Martha resented Dad. She hated him in many respects. I know she never forgave him for kicking her in the back one time on the front sidewalk for some incident. She said, Ill never forgive him.
Marthas mother was also a victim, according Frank.
Mom denies it and says, Oh, it never happened, but there was some beating going on between the two of them, and I was in the middle trying to push them apart. There was pushing and slapping around.
One time they got into a squabble and were going at it hot and heavy. I was maybe eight years old and Martha was around twelve. They were smacking each other, and I remember crying out, Why dont you just go and divorce him. I dont know where I got that from. Maybe Mom was saying, If you continue this, Im going to divorce you. I used to be afraid of that.
Kostyra, who saw himself as a ladies man, which he wasnt. He boasted that when he travelled stewardesses were always looking at him, and flirting.
Mom would hear stories, recalled Eric. But she would let things go by the by. Maybe he was trying to piss her off because he liked a lot of attention. He always wanted to get a rise out of somebody, and always at their expense.
But as Martha described her family in her magazine and books, the Kostyras were an ideal family, with picture-perfect parents bursting with love.
Marthas favorite television show, Father Knows Best, began airing in the 1950s, and a pal from those days recalled that Martha acted much like cute, perky Betty Anderson, the fictional teen daughter on the show.
Martha fantasized about being in a family like the TV Andersons, friends from back then recalled.
While Martha became the expert on entertaining and baking with her numerous books, friends said she did little back when she was living at home.
The mood in the Kostyra home, they felt, was cold and forbidding, unlike the convivial atmosphere Martha promoted to the public. Friends said they feared her father, a real ogre.
When he hollered, we all ran. It was you-dont-stick-around time…I remember him throwing things when he got angry. Martha would just go upstairs…everyone walked on eggshells around him.
Her brother Frank said: Dad was physical with us. He had a fiery temper, and when we misbehaved or got out of line, we got the stick or the belt
Martha fantasized about being in a family like the TV Andersons from her favorite show Father Knows Best, friends from back then recalled
Stress and anxiety weighed heavily in the Kostyra home, with violent arguments among the siblings, especially between Martha and brother Frank.
Martha and I fought a lot, Frank told me for the book.
Martha claims she still has a scar below her belly button where I bit her. Until a few years ago I still carried the lead mark in my finger where she stabbed me with a pencil and broke the lead off in my hand trying to get me.
Looking back years later, Frank Kostyra came to believe that because of Marthas treatment in early life – I imagine by Dad – I think she became a man-hater. She didnt like male authority then, and she doesnt now.
One of the new films lead producers contacted me during the planning for an interview because, as he wrote to me in an email, Just Desserts is really the go-to Martha biography.
In an April 2023 email, he asked to interview me about Marthas Control. Perfection. Reputation. Reinvention. Self- Destruction. And he sent a list of other questions. We later spent a day on the phone with a sound man at my home recording everything.
But months later the producer let me know that I was out of the final cut even though I had received compensation for my time and work.
He gave me no credible reason for being cut, and while I cant prove it, Id bet Martha, who tried at least once to have my book killed, was behind my ouster.
