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In 2023, she set off a meringue of titillation when she became the oldest person to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, casually revealed that she is getting into the AI space with the development of a tool called 鈥淎sk Martha,鈥� joined forces with Amazon in the launch of a portal called 鈥淭he World of Martha鈥� and, all in all, continued to hover darlingly in the culture because of an unencumbered social media presence (posting to her 4.3 million Instagram followers with a verve that Bon Appetit has described as that of 鈥漚 grandmother who needs to clean her phone camera鈥�).

The year before that, the one-time stockbroker who fetishized the lifestyle space 鈥� the one who foresaw media and commerce intermingling in a way it would take others decades to clue into 鈥� opened her first ever restaurant, The Bedford in Las Vegas (a city-of-sin replica of Stewart鈥檚 1925 farmhouse in Bedford, New York). And put out a trio of shows on the Roku channel (with whom she is creating a slew of programming dedicated to cooking, gardening, entertaining).

From a line of healthy pet food in the works to a collaboration with Skechers to her fascinating friendship with Snoop Dogg, the 82-year-old is everywhere. 2024, among other things? It promises to bring the publication of her 100th book (100th!) and also a four-part docuseries called “The Many Lives of Martha Stewart,” premiering this month on CNN. The latter? Not something the domestic doyenne is participating in (presumably because she has her own documentary in the works with Apple TV), but it is interesting 鈥� at least to me 鈥� because it coincides with an important milestone: 20 years since her fatal (seemed then) fall from grace, when she headed to the slammer.

March 5, 2004: a date that probably haunts Stewart. When she was found guilty of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and making false statements (she was originally indicted for securities fraud, not insider trading, as is sometimes erroneously remembered, but that charge was dismissed). The courtroom drama, for those who recall it, was a full-court circus. Think: the Gwyneth trial last year, but many times bigger as a pop storm! (In a pre-social media world, Stewart’s vintage Herm猫s Birkin, valued at $12,000, which she cavalierly carried into the courtroom, was a viral moment 鈥� before viral moments).

In an Icarus-meets-Edith Wharton narrative strain 鈥� when a seemingly perfect hostess who aimed too high must be taken down some notches and be banished from the social world 鈥� she was sent to prison for five months in West Virginia (with more time spent later with her personal ankle bracelet). And yet, looking back now: it was a glitch that only made Martha more famous, more hungry for a comeback, more, dare we say, relatable to the public (after she had been humbled!): a Stewart 鈥渨ho re-emerged blonder and tougher and, product-wise at least, more ubiquitous than ever, with 8,500 Martha Stewart-branded items,鈥� as the Financial Times wrote some years ago.

The rehabilitation tour began, indeed, almost right after prison when she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair (for the first time!). As a proud owner of that issue, I pulled it out the other day and was tickled to read the cover type: “Out of the Dog House, But Still Under House Arrest” (complete with a flood of pink peonies in the backdrop, a jubilant Martha hugging her French bulldog, Francesca, for dear life).

Since then, there’s only been further recognition that Martha is a singular character in the American fabric 鈥� as transformative as a Ralph Lauren or Steve Jobs when it comes to the esthetics of daily life. Add to that: the thesis that she was the OG influencer in the lifestyle space, as an Eater essay posited last year (timed to the final print edition of her seminal magazine, Martha Stewart Living). All of which now acts as a sort of scaffolding for the new CNN series.

Hold all the spider plants, the pendant lights and the cannoli cakes! Before we can move forward, we must go backwards, as I discovered when I got to sneak the first episode. All the way to the 1960s, when the New York Stock Exchange was so anti-female you couldn’t be a clerk on the floor if you were a woman, and into a world Martha first waded into as a broker in the next decade. 鈥淭his woman cannot miss鈥�: what one of her former colleagues remembers telling himself when he encountered her. Cue: the stock footage of Mary Tyler Moore throwing up her beret.

Born Martha Kostyra and one of six kids 鈥� her mother, a teacher; dad, a pharmaceutical salesman 鈥� she was, as we learn, one of those whippersnappers who, instead of going to football games with her friends, would go model coats on Saturdays, making $15 a day. The modelling also helped her pay for college, when she got into Barnard, though she could not afford to live in the dorm. Later, she met husband-to-be Andy Stewart, when he was at Yale Law School.

We hear about her early predilection for food, thumbing through Julia Child cookbooks, even when she was on Wall Street, reading them like they were a textbook! We get into the couple dinner parties, from another old friend, when Martha once presented an endive quiche (who had heard of endive then?). We go back to the Stewarts鈥� flight to Connecticut, to their now-iconic Turkey Hill farmstead, where Martha got the itch for homemaking (preserving the original floors of that home and using historically accurate paints, as a historian points out).

In the most evocative part of this first episode, we get a vivid memory via Martha鈥檚 own words 鈥� from an old interview 鈥� of the days she spent 鈥減ainting the house from top to bottom聽鈥� a big old farmhouse 鈥� by myself, while listening to the Watergate hearings,” which were on at the time. She was thinking about the woman she would become, while watching America unspool.

The Martha as we know her comes into frame, when she starts her very successful catering company (so many snow peas, strung exactingly, slit and filled!), which eventually becomes a million-dollar business, leads to high-profile gigs with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sotheby’s, then ultimately results in her first book, “Entertaining,” which would become the most influential cookbook since “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by, yes, Julia Child. Until then, most cookbooks did not have photographs (which is amazing to think about) and her book, as one observer puts it, 鈥渨as less about rules 鈥� much freer and more personal. She captured the art of presentation.鈥�

Future episodes in the series turn more to the making of Martha the Mogul and the fraying of her marriage. And, of course, eventually, The Fall. Before the rerise.

As an avatar of stick-with-it-ness and aging with glee, I think back to Martha once saying that she has always been optimistic. Never fearful. Her advice: 鈥淒on’t be afraid to walk across that board across the ravine. And don’t be afraid to carry a gigantic bowl of water.鈥�

How? 鈥淵ou never look at the bowl, look at where you’re going. Don’t look down and you’ll get there.鈥�

The first two episodes of “The Many Lives of Martha Stewart” air Jan 28 on CNN.