Martha Stewart Lets Slip That She Cheated on Her Ex-Husband — Says He Never Knew

In October 1995, a picture of a smiling Martha Stewart holding a bird graced the cover of People Magazine. The article written about the television personality was penned two months prior, on her birthday. The reporter was visiting Martha at her $1.7 million home in East Hampton, N.Y. At that point in her life, she was a wildly successful entrepreneur who had built an empire around comfort and nostalgia.

This was a woman who spent nearly two decades of her life showing the world how to create and maintain the perfect home. As Martha was making heart-shaped waffles for the journalist she agreed to speak to that day, the conversation turned to her divorce which was finalized in 1990. "The life that I had is over," she said. Almost 20 years later, Martha would touch on her marriage in a much different way, by admitting to an affair in a Netflix documentary.

The Netflix documentary about the business mogul is aptly titled Martha, and takes us through the life of the "first female self-made billionaire," according to Martha herself. Images of her success dance across the screen in a trailer for the documentary, as we hear someone describe Martha as the first influencer. She made her money by selling perfection, except all was not well behind the scenes.

In what can only be described as a plot twist, Martha says, "Young women, listen to my advice. If you're married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he's a piece of s--t. Get out of that marriage." A producer off-camera interrupts in order to ask Martha if she also had an affair. "Yeah, but I don't think Andy ever knew about that," says Martha. If there was ever a sound byte to reel people into a series, it's definitely this one.

After Martha and Andrew Stewart divorced, he went on to marry her former assistant Robyn Fairclough who was 21 years his junior. They eventually divorced and in 2016, Andrew married Shyla Nelson, the president and CEO of Fieldstone Publishing, per People Magazine. As of October 2024, Andrew and Shyla are still together. Martha never remarried, but she did have some interesting boyfriends, including but not limited to a well-respected actor.

We aren't 100 percent sure when Martha and actor Anthony Hopkins dated, but according to CNN, it was probably before he married his third wife in 2003. While appearing on The Meredith Vieira Show in 2014, Martha said she "went out to dinner with him a couple of times, but all she could think of was Hannibal Lecter." For the three people who don't know, that is his character from Silence of the Lambs.

In January 2022, Martha was once again asked about her brief dalliance with Sir Anthony Hopkins when she was a guest on The Ellen Show. This time when asked if they broke up because Martha couldn't get Hannibal the Cannibal out of her mind, she said yes. "I have a big, scary house in Maine that’s way by itself on 100 acres in the forest, and I couldn’t even imagine taking Anthony Hopkins there," she revealed. "I couldn’t — all I could think of was him eating, you know…"