Hailed as the guru of good taste and queen of domesticity, Martha Stewart has with a near-obsessive drive to succeed turned her life-long skills in catering, gardening and home decoration into a multi-million dollar industry. Born Martha Kostyra in Jersey City, New Jersey, Stewart was raised in a typical Polish-Catholic middle class home—her father was a pharmaceutical salesman and her mother was a sixth-grade school teacher. She has credited her father as the one who taught her all she knew about carpentry, gardening and public speaking, even if it came with the threat of a beating. While still in grade school, Stewart embarked on her catering career by organizing birthday parties for neighborhood children and in high school, she prepared a large breakfast for the football team. Always an excellent student, Stewart won a scholarship to New York University, but turned it down to work her way through the more prestigious Barnard College.

In order to pay for school, Stewart began modeling—her striking good looks made it easy for her to find work. She appeared on television ads for Clairol hair products and Lifeboy soap, and even showed up in a print ad for Tareyton cigarettes. It was at this time that she met her future husband, Andy Stewart, then law student at Yale. Supporting the both of them with modeling, they struggled for a time, but their picture brightened when Stewart became a stockbroker. She had been investing in the market with money from her wedding and over time became intrigued with the securities business. Then in 1968, she contacted Andy Monness of Monness, Williams, and Sidel at the behest of a mutual friend. Impressed with her aggressiveness and drive for success, Monness hired Stewart on the spot. She soon passed the exam and quickly became a successful broker, earning at one point an annual salary of $135,000—a fortune for the time.

The 1973 recession prompted Stewart to leave the securities industry. By this time, her husband was a high-powered corporate attorney, which afforded Stewart the opportunity to concentrate on catering. Meanwhile, the couple bought a rundown 19th century farmhouse on Turkey Hill Road in Westport, Connecticut that Stewart dubbed the Turkey Hill Farm. The fixer-upper took five years to complete, with Stewart lamenting years later that they should have lived elsewhere while restoring the house. She then formed a catering company—Uncatered Affair—with friend Norma Collier, and catered parties and taught cooking classes around town. The working relationship, however, was doomed to fail—Stewart’s fanatic control over the business forced the friends to split.

Stewart moved on to work for the Westport Common Market—an upscale mall and food court. She was granted the opportunity by the owners to sell freshly prepared good and run the day-to-day operations, but when a New York Times reporter conducted an interview, she made the mistake of saying she was the proprietor of the shop, something that angered the owners. Stewart was fired after the incident. Throughout the 1970’s, Stewart turned her catering into a million dollar business. Attracting the attention of major newspapers and magazines, she received prominent attention from Bon Appetit, Country Living and Good Housekeeping, while becoming food editor and columnist for House Beautiful. Her widest recognition came with the publication of her first book, Entertaining, a deal that was negotiated by her husband, who had left the law business to enter publishing. The coffee-table book went on to sell over 500,000 copies.

In 1980’s, Stewart released several more tomes on homemaking, earning wide praise, but some criticism—some of her suggestions were considered beyond the financial reach of her fans. Stewart backhanded such critiques by saying that she gave something people could dream about and strive to attain whether it was within their means to do so or not. She also began appearing on television, first with Willard Scott on “Today” (NBC, 1951- ), then on “Holiday Entertaining With Martha Stewart (PBS, 1986), a TV special in which she offered Yuletide advice for food preparation, home decorations and seating arrangements. In 1987, Stewart signed with Kmart to be their lifestyle consultant, through which she was able to promote her line of bed and bath products.

After divorcing from her husband in 1989, she started her own magazine Martha Stewart’s Living, which hit the shelves in 1990 and by 1997 claimed a circulation of more than two million. She then started her own television show, “Martha Stewart Living” (1993-2004). Starting as a weekly syndicated series, it was expanded to a daily half-hour show in 1997, then to an hour-long format in 1999. By the mid-1990’s, Stewart had become a multi-million dollar industry. Meanwhile, she commanded further control over her career, splitting from Time Warner in 1997 to form Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, from which she exercised exclusive control over her publishing, television and merchandising enterprises. She also revamped her languishing Kmart line and spawned her successful Everyday products.

Labeled the world’s number one mega-brand by Fortune magazine, Stewart was in command of a $200 million empire by the end of the 1990’s. Though routinely derided by the media throughout her career, her growing wealth and stature only stoked the fires of criticism. The long-running “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ) routinely parodied the housekeeping maven--via castmemebr Ana Gastyer's memorable impression--cementing her status as a pop culutral icon. Meanwhile, Stewart earned high praise and several television awards, including six Daytime Emmy’s for “Martha Stewart Living.”

Riding high on the seemingly unstoppable Martha Stewart juggernaut, she crashed into a brick wall in 2003 when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges when she allegedly dumped stock in the biopharmaceutical company, ImClone Systems, after an unlawful tip from broker Peter Bacanovic. The insider trading charges were later dismissed, but she faced charges of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. She was convicted on all four counts and sentenced to five months in a minimum security prison (she was roundly criticized for invoking the name of Nelson Mandela in her post-sentencing interviews.)

Stewart was released in March 2005 and began the second phase of her sentence—five months of house arrest. Wasting no time getting her life and career back together, Stewart produced more television shows, including “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart”, reality series producer Mark Burnett's spin-off of the successful Donald Trump series where winners get a job at Omnimedia. However, when the show debuted in the fall of 2005, its ratings were not "a good thing" and the network opted against renewing the series for a second season. She also began developing “Martha”, a syndicated spin-off of “Martha Stewart Living” where she would give her home decoration and catering advice to a live audience.