Martha Stewart

American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality, also known as a convicted felon who served five months in federal prison for fraud in 2004-2005.

Her "Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia" reportedly made up to $25 million in profits in 1997 on revenues of $120 million. She was the editor of Martha Stewart Living magazine with a circulation of 1.3 million, appeared on a syndicated TV show seen by five million a week and appeared regularly on NBC's "Today" show. Her products include 14 books, six videos, signature sheets, towels and paints. She permeated practically every cranny of the American market, celebrating the lost art of housekeeping. When Time Inc., which published her magazine, refused to produce her home catalog, she bought the magazine for a reported $75 million. And when Stewart was told by town officials in Westport, Connecticut that she could no longer tape her TV show from her home in the city, she leased a site nearby to create a studio space.

Stewart is a can-do anything and everything go-getter, always on the move. An insomniac, she sleeps some four hours a night, and the jokes go that she plants the garden before breakfast, paints the house before lunch and reorganizes Microsoft by dinnertime.

The second of six kids, she was raised by a super-competent and critical father whose pattern she apparently adopted.

In 1960 she met Andy Stewart, 23, a Yale law student and they married the following year; one child. They bought and renovated an old Westport farmhouse in 1973, and in 1975 Martha opened a cooperative where local women could sell their baked goods. She started a catering business and in no time at all was whipping up crème brulees for the like of Robert Redford and her Westport neighbors. The Stewart empire had begun.

To her dismay, Andy moved out in 1987 and they divorced in 1990. The separation was not amicable and Andy got a court order to keep Martha away.