We’re not in the business of homework assignments, but we do have a required viewing for any New Jersey resident with a Netflix subscription: Martha, the nearly two-hour investigation into the life and legacy of cultural icon Martha Stewart. Though Martha has spent most of her life in Connecticut (and very briefly, in prison), her story starts here in the Garden State, being born in Jersey City and raised in Nutley. Martha gives more than one shout-out to her New Jersey roots throughout the documentary — among a host of other quotable moments — and as Jersey Girls ourselves, we couldn’t help but feel proud. Keep reading for a brief rundown of Martha Stewart’s New Jersey story and her newest Netflix documentary, Martha.
^Nutley, NJ
Garden State Beginnings
On August 3, 1941, Martha Helen Kostyra was born in Jersey City at Margaret Hague Hospital. The daughter of Edward “Eddie” Kostyra and Martha Ruszkowski Kostyra, Martha is the second of six siblings: Laura Plimpton, Frank Kostyra, Kathryn Evans, George Christiansen, and Eric Scott.
Read More: A List of Female Celebrities From New Jersey
Per previous reporting from our team at The Hoboken Girl, Martha’s grandparents emigrated from Poland to Jersey City in the 1920s. For the first few years of Martha’s life, her family called Jersey City Heights home, on the second floor of an apartment on Stagg Street. In 2018, she visited her former family residence and shared it on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
When Martha was three years old, her family swapped city living for the suburbs and moved to Nutley, New Jersey, where she spent most of her adolescence. The family lived at 86 Elm Place, which was up for sale in 2023, per MarthaStewart.com.
Martha has always been a go-getter. Between jobs as a babysitter (for several Yankees players, BTW) and model, she attended Nutley’s public schools and graduated from Nutley High School in 1959. When she wasn’t busy with various school activities (Art Club, Latin Club, Future Nurses of America, and the bowling club), Martha laid the groundwork for her career by absorbing everything she could from her parents about cooking, gardening, hosting, and homemaking.
Eventually, Martha left New Jersey to study on scholarship at Barnard College in New York City. She never returned to Garden State as a resident, but she “always remembered [her] youth with great fondness,” she recalled during her induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in October 2019.
The Documentary
Netflix released Martha, the documentary film directed by R.J. Cutler, on October 25th, 2024. While Martha Stewart has since described the film as “a bit lazy” to The New York Times, her story is anything but. Instead, it’s a chronicle of idea-chasing and career-changing that earned her titles like the “original influencer” and the “first self-made female billionaire,” among many others (and not all as positive).
Through a sit-down interview with Martha herself and narratives from people close to her, the nearly two-hour documentary travels through the many iterations of Martha Stewart’s life: her humble beginnings in New Jersey, her teenage modeling career, her time as a student in NYC, her brief stint on Wall Street, her catering business, her author era, the rise and fall and rise again of her media company, her time in prison and post-prison.
View this post on Instagram
No matter who Martha was at any given point in the story — or who she is now at 83 years old — there’s an underlying sentiment that she is first and foremost “a girl from New Jersey,” and that this identifier made way for the ones that would follow. As Martha puts it: “Listen, here’s this girl from a family of eight in Nutley, New Jersey living modestly, who gets a good idea, builds it into something really fine, and profits from it. That’s basically my story. And then [she] falls in a hole.”
And, for good measure, here’s how Martha described herself in college: “People knew who I was, a tall, blonde, pretty girl from New Jersey, looking stylish in Bermuda shorts.”
See More: All the Celebrities Spotted in Hoboken + Jersey City This Year (So Far)
Martha might’ve built her brand on the “perfectly perfect,” but the turbulence of her career and public image deconstructed that myth, and in a sense, “freed” her from it, as the film says. Martha, now at 83, appears to be truly unbothered by what the general public thinks of her. And what’s more New Jersey than that?
You can stream Martha on Netflix. For all the latest North Jersey updates, be sure to follow @themontclairgirl on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
The Best of Montclair 2024 Guide Finalists Announced — VOTE NOW!
The finalists for the Best of Montclair 2024 Guide are in! Thank you to everyone who nominated local businesses and people in Montclair and the greater Essex County area to receive the recognition that they deserve. Those who received the most nominations in each category advanced to the top three finalists, so before anyone says so-and-so was robbed, remember: we make the rules, we don’t pick the finalists.
How to Vote
Readers and community members are the reason these businesses are so successful so now it’s your chance to vote for your favorites. You can vote once per day in all categories, now through Sunday, December 8th at 11:59PM. That’s it — we’ll do the tallying from there! The winners will be announced in mid-December once the categories are tallied.
Finalists will win a decal sticker to display on their storefronts and accolades on our website for all to see in the new year.
***By submitting your email, you agree to receive marketing communications from TheMontclairGirl.com.
This is one of the easiest + quickest ways to support your local favorites this holiday season — plus, who doesn’t love a friendly competition? Good luck to all our Montclair + Essex County finalists — and let the voting begin!
