page_title: Martha Stewart
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Martha Stewart / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Martha Stewart and Alexis Stewart at the Whatever, Martha premiere party.
context_page_description: Martha Helen Stewart is an American retail businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former model. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, merchandising and e-commerce. She has written numerous bestselling books, is the publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine and hosted two syndicated television programs: Martha Stewart Living, which ran from 1993 to 2004, and Martha, which ran from 2005 to 2012.
  In 2004, Stewart was convicted of charges related to the ImClone stock trading case. There was speculation that the incident would effectively end her media empire, but in 2005 Stewart began a comeback campaign and her company returned to profitability in 2006. Stewart rejoined the board of directors of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2011 and became chairwoman of her namesake company again in 2012. The company was acquired by Sequential Brands in 2015.
context_section_description: In 1961, she married Andrew Stewart, then a student at Yale Law School. Their only child, a daughter named Alexis, was born in 1965. The couple separated in 1987 and divorced in 1990. Subsequently, Martha Stewart dated 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, a Fell Pony named Ben Chunch, and Friesian horses, including her dark horse Rutger. Stewart no longer wears fur since her daughter opened her eyes about the issue."
  Martha Kostyra, Stewart's mother, died at the age of 93 on November 16, 2007. Kostyra, also called "Big Martha" by her family, had appeared on Martha Stewart Living numerous times.
  Stewart currently resides in Katonah, a hamlet of the town of Bedford, New York. She also maintains a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) 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).
caption: Alexis Stewart (left) and Martha Stewart (right), in September 2008
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