Martha Stewart - Personal Life

Personal Life

At age 19, she married Andrew "Andy" Stewart, in 1961. Their only child, a daughter named Alexis, was born in 1965. Martha and Andrew Stewart divorced in 1989. Subsequently, Stewart dated Sir Anthony Hopkins, but ended the relationship after she saw The Silence of the Lambs. She stated she was unable to avoid associating Hopkins with the character of Hannibal Lecter.

Stewart reportedly dated billionaire Charles Simonyi, who was an early employee of Microsoft and head of their software group, on-and-off for 15 years. She featured footage of him as a space tourist aboard Soyuz on her television show in 2007. They broke up around February 2008.

Stewart is an avid animal lover. Her pets include champion show Chow Chow dogs, French Bulldogs, Himalayan cats, and Friesian horses, including her dark horse Rutger. Stewart also created a video on behalf of fur-bearing animals after being approached by PETA while in jail. Stewart stated, "I used to wear real fur, but, like many others, I had a change of heart when I learned what actually happens to the animals". Stewart filmed a public service announcement on behalf of the farm animal welfare organization Farm Sanctuary.

Martha Kostyra, Stewart's mother, died at the age of 93 on November 16, 2007. Martha Kostyra, also called "Big Martha" by her family, had appeared on Martha Stewart Living numerous times.

Stewart currently resides in Katonah, New York, a hamlet of Bedford, New York. She also maintains a 35,000 square foot residence on Mount Desert Island in Seal Harbor, Maine, known as 'Skylands', the former summer estate of automobile designer and tycoon, Edsel Ford, with gardens designed by renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen (1922).

In an episode of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it was discovered that Martha Stewart's maternal line has its roots in the Lipka Tatar people of Poland.