Ina Garten says a memorable interaction with Oprah Winfrey inspired the title of her new memoir

In the conclusion of her new memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” Ina Garten reveals the inspiration behind her book title. The title, she writes, can be credited to a chance meeting with Oprah Winfrey back in 2010.

“I spoke about how lucky I was at each phase of my career because it seemed whatever I was most interested in doing was exactly what the world wanted at the time,” she writes of the speech she delivered while accepting the Matrix Award for Women in Media. “I was lucky that I was interested in food and cookbooks at a time when the world was interested in food and cookbooks. I was lucky that Food Network was looking for home cooks when they found me, and lucky that they refused to take no for an answer. Lucky.”

Afterward, Garten took her seat on the stage “right next to Oprah,” she writes.

“Immediately, she turned and smacked me on the arm, saying, ‘You weren’t lucky. You make your own luck,’” Garten recalls Winfrey telling her. “‘Actually, I have been lucky,’ I started to say,” she writes. “And then she smacked me again.”

Garten then says Lesley Stahl referenced Garten’s conversation with Winfrey while introducing the next guest on stage. “‘Why do successful women always say they’re lucky, and successful men say they got there by the force of their talent?” Stahl said, per Garten.

The topic of luck came up again weeks later, when she learned about the time Liza Minelli told a 23-year-old Rob Marshall to “Be ready when the luck happens.” Those moments ultimately inspired Garten’s memoir. Her story is about “hard work and luck,” she writes, adding that she never has a “five-year plan.”

Garten says she instead concentrates “on what’s in front of me and work[s] hard because I love what I do, and I have fun doing it.”

“And then I leave the door open, so I’ll be ready when the luck happens,” she closes out her memoir.