Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart (born August 3, 1941) is a popular Polish-American television and magazine personality known for her
cooking, gardening, etiquette, and arts and crafts projects, and as a general lifestyle guide and homemaker. Starting in
2002 Martha Stewart's career was rocked by a scandal involving her sale of shares in a drug company days before its application for a
new drug was denied. She was eventually convicted of lying to investigators and sentenced to prison in 2004. She was
released on March 4, 2005.
Born Martha Helen Kostyra in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Polish-American parents, she grew up in Nutley, New Jersey,
with four brothers and sisters. A good student, she received a partial scholarship to Barnard College in New York City,
where she worked part time as a model to help pay her expenses. She initially intended to major in chemistry but switched
to art, European history, and architectural history. After graduation, she pursued her budding modeling career and starred in
several television commercials. She stopped modelling in 1965 when she had a daughter, Alexis, with husband Andrew
Stewart, a law student she met in college. After modelling, she began pursuing her second career as a stock broker.
She continued in this profession until 1973 when recession hit Wall Street. She and her husband then moved to Westport,
Connecticut and began restoration of an 1805 farmhouse which is occasionally seen in her television programs (though she
uses a stage environment for many shots) and where she still lives today (until her 2004 incarceration). In later years,
she began a successful catering business out of her home and began writing columns and articles on topics such as
cooking, gardening, and home furnishing. During the 1980s, she was a contributing editor to Family Circle magazine and
became a spokesperson for Kmart in 1987 and in 1990, she started her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living. That same
year her husband filed for divorce on the same day that her book on Weddings came out.
In 1993, she began hosting a half-hour syndicated television show by the same name. She soon introduced her own line
of home products under the name "The Martha Stewart Everyday Collection." Stewart rose to national prominence with
regular appearances on NBC's The Today Show. By 1997 she had launched her first of nine exclusive product lines. She
also hosted a cooking show on the Food Network called From Martha's Kitchen and a gardening show on Home and Garden
TV called From Martha's Garden.
In 1999, she founded the company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia traded on the New York Stock Exchange to combine
and control all her enterprises under one corporate entity. She became its chief executive officer and chairman until 2003.
Stewart owns approximately 61% of the equity of the company and 94% of the voting power.
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