Biography
Hailed as the guru of good taste and queen of domesticity, entrepreneur and television personality Martha Stewart used her near-obsessive drive to turn her lifelong skills in catering, gardening and home decoration into a multimillion-dollar industry. Having learned all she knew from her parents and her grandparents, Stewart left a successful career as a stock broker to enter into a catering business with a friend, only to have her unflinching will to control the business drive the two apart. Once on her own, however, Stewart was free to run things as she saw fit, resulting in attention from top newspapers and magazines. She parlayed her financial success with her catering business into a powerful media empire, starting with publishing her first book, "Entertaining" (1982), while making appearances on popular morning shows. Stewart soon launched her own magazine, "Martha Stewart Living," in 1990, while launching her television show of the same name just three years later. Stewart was catapulted into a national celebrity who earned her share of praise and criticism; the latter largely stemming from her hard-driving business tactics. But at the height of her popularity, Stewart was brought back down to Earth when she was convicted in 2004 for obstruction of justice after being cleared of insider trading following her timely sale of ImClone Systems stock. Her conviction and five-month prison sentence served as fodder for the news and gossip shows, which covered her ordeal with the same obsessive zeal as she had building her empire. After being released in 2005, Stewart resumed her varied activities without a hitch, launching new business ventures, a Sirius satellite channel and several television specials, while moving her daily show to the Hallmark Channel, proving that even prison failed to stop the Martha Stewart juggernaut. After her prison stint, Stewart let her puckish sense of humor -- one often hidden by a not-entirely-justified public image some viewers found frosty or haughty -- come more to the fore. This culminated in the reality series "Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party" (VH1 2016- ), a show about home entertaining that paired Stewart with her longtime friend, Snoop Dogg.
