Martha Stewart Looks Back at Photos From Her Extraordinary Life for PEOPLE

Before the Omnimedia Empire, There Was a Teen Model With a Plan

The queen that is Martha Stewart gets into the time machine for PEOPLE, looking back at the photographs that chart her evolution from New Jersey teenager and working model to Wall Street stockbroker, lifestyle revolutionary, media mogul and Snoop Dogg’s most unexpectedly perfect friend.

The retrospective arrived as Stewart celebrated her 85th birthday and PEOPLE revisited the many lives packed into one singular career. Long before “It’s a good thing” became a cultural stamp of approval, Martha was already treating every opportunity like the beginning of a larger operation.

She began modeling in high school to help earn money for her family, later walking in fashion shows and appearing in advertisements for brands including Clairol and Chanel. The work continued while she attended Barnard College, where she studied history and architectural history.

Modeling Paid the Bills, but Martha Was Already Studying the Entire Room

The modeling photographs are fascinating not merely because Martha looked camera-ready decades before becoming a household name. They capture someone learning how images sell an idea, how presentation shapes desire and how details can turn something ordinary into something aspirational.

Those lessons would eventually become part of the Martha Stewart operating system. A table was never simply set; it communicated a point of view. A magazine page was not only informational; it had to invite readers into a complete visual world. A recipe could teach technique while also selling the pleasure of having done it beautifully.

The future mogul was not waiting backstage for the real career to begin. She was quietly collecting material.

At Barnard, Stewart met Yale law student Andy Stewart, whom she married in 1961. Their daughter, Alexis, arrived four years later. After college, Martha entered another environment rarely associated with domestic lifestyle television: Wall Street.

Wall Street Taught Her That a Beautiful Idea Still Needs a Business

Stewart spent seven years working as an institutional stockbroker. She has said the experience taught her what it takes to build a meaningful company—a lesson that would matter when her name eventually expanded from an individual expert into publishing, television, merchandising and a publicly traded media business.

In 1971, Martha and Andy moved to an 1805 farmhouse in Westport, Connecticut, later known as Turkey Hill. Restoring the property helped deepen her interests in design, gardening and home repair. After leaving Wall Street, she launched a catering business from her kitchen in 1973.

That business led to Entertaining, her influential first cookbook, published in 1982. The book did more than offer recipes. It combined personal storytelling, detailed instruction and lush photography into the kind of complete lifestyle vision that would become Martha’s signature.

By the time most people discovered Martha, she had already been a model, college student, wife, mother, stockbroker, renovator, caterer and bestselling author. The “overnight success” had completed several careers before breakfast.

PEOPLE’s 1995 Cover Caught Martha Just Before the Empire Went Public

Martha Stewart Living launched as a magazine in 1990, followed by a television program in 1996. In between, PEOPLE placed Stewart on its cover in 1995 and offered readers a glimpse into the private life behind her rapidly expanding public success.

The old profile noted one of her chief frustrations: there was never enough time in the day. Thirty-one years later, PEOPLE recreated that cover at her Bedford, New York, farm, and the basic problem had not changed. Martha still had more ideas, more projects and more grout requiring professional-level attention.

In 1999, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock tripled before the close of the first day, making Stewart America’s first self-made female billionaire. The teenage model who learned to sell an image had built an entire marketplace around her point of view.

The Comeback Was Not a Chapter Break—It Became Part of the Brand

The photographs also pass through the most difficult public period of Stewart’s life. She was convicted in 2004 on charges including conspiracy and obstruction of justice connected to an investigation into her sale of ImClone stock. She served five months in federal prison and returned home in March 2005.

Then she went back to work. New television projects followed, along with books, product lines, public appearances and a cultural reassessment that allowed Martha to become more candid, funnier and considerably less interested in behaving like a spotless corporate symbol.

She did not erase the difficult photographs. She kept moving until they became part of a larger contact sheet.

Then Snoop Dogg Walked Into the Kitchen and Pop Culture Improved

Martha first welcomed Snoop Dogg to The Martha Stewart Show in 2008, where they made mashed potatoes and immediately demonstrated that two people from very different public worlds could share timing, curiosity and a willingness to play along.

The friendship deepened after they appeared together at the 2015 Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber. Their VH1 series, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, premiered in 2016 and ran for three seasons, transforming a supposedly unlikely pairing into one of entertainment’s most durable friendships.

By then, Martha’s appeal had expanded beyond perfect pie crusts and precisely folded linens. Younger audiences understood the humor that had always been there, while Snoop gave her another space to be spontaneous without asking her to become anyone other than herself.

She taught America how to entertain. Snoop reminded America that Martha herself was extremely entertaining.

Martha Stewart’s Extraordinary Life and Career in Photos

The supplied gallery preserves the remaining four images from the PEOPLE retrospective in their original INYIM order.

Martha Stewart revisits photographs spanning her modeling years, education, media career and enduring friendship with Snoop Dogg.

The timeline now stretches beyond one hundred books, restaurants, product collaborations, a history-making Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover at age 81 and a social-media presence that can turn a poolside selfie into international news.

At 85, Martha’s greatest achievement may be that the archive never feels closed. Every old photograph seems less like evidence of who she used to be and more like another ingredient that somehow remains in use.

Watch Martha Stewart Look Back at Photos From Her Life for PEOPLE

The supplied PEOPLE video follows Stewart through photographs connected to her modeling years, college life, career milestones and friendship with Snoop Dogg.

Source: PEOPLE.