Ina Garden never met Diane Keaton but she does have a unique special connection to the late actress.

Keaton, who died on Oct. 11 at age 79starred in the Nancy Meyers film Something’s Gotta Give in 2003 alongside Jack Nicholson — and a portion of the set from the film was modeled after Garten‘s now-closed gourmet food store Barefoot Contessa. Garten first opened the Hamptons, N.Y. shop in 1978 and it was a hit with locals and seasonal travelers who flocked to the New York beach towns in the summer.

“So Nancy Meyers is a very good friend,” Garten tells PEOPLE while chatting about the new season of her Food Network show Be My Guest (premiering Oct. 19). “But before I knew her, she called the store and asked if she could film in the store. Of course we said yes. So we closed the store. It was like a Tuesday in the middle of the winter or something. And we closed the store and she filmed there.”

For some reason, Meyers decided the shoot didn’t work, according to Garten, and instead wanted to recreate the store in a studio in Los Angeles. “So she asked us to send her two of every single thing in the store, which is what we did,” says Garten. “It was like the biggest sale ever.”

The end result on film shows characters Erica (Keaton), Harry (Nicholson) and Marin (Amanda Peet) in the store. And according to Garten, the set design team nailed the look — and not just thanks to the food that Garten sent.

“There are posters from my book on the wall. There are things that are in my store in that scene,” she says.

Garten owned and operated Barefoot Contessa (named after an Ava Gardner movie) until 1996 before selling it to two of her employees, who ran it for nearly a decade. Garten worked above the store after it sold and wrote her cookbooks under the same name.

She later reunited with Meyers long after Something’s Gotta Give came out. “Many years later, I was in a restaurant in New York and a woman came over to me and I’m like, ‘Oh, who’s this?'” Garten recalls. “And she said, ‘I’m Nancy Meyers.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God, sit down!'”

The two have been friends ever since. “I know during the pandemic, Nancy and I would talk a lot. She and Diane live quite near each other, so they kind of got each other through the pandemic,” she says of Meyers’ friendship with Keaton.

Garten even “thought it would be really fun” to have Meyers and Keaton on her show Be My Guest: “But I missed my opportunity, unfortunately.”

The new season of Be My Guestwhich shoots at her home in East Hampton, kicks off with a funny cooking lesson and conversation with Garten’s friend Tina Fey. Subsequent episodes feature actress Christine Baranski, violin virtuoso and symphony orchestra conductor Itzhak Perlman and fashion designer Daniel Roseberry.

“It’s been really quite an incredible experience doing these shows, because every time somebody says, ‘Yes, I’ll come to East Hampton for the day,’ I think, ‘Really?'” she laughs. “They’re just extraordinary people.”

When Perlman came over, Garten thought “Oh, my God, I can’t believe he’s here,” she recalls. “There was a moment where I was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to talk to about?’ And then within five minutes, he made me feel so comfortable.”

“We were like two people from the old country,” she adds with a laugh. “We were two Eastern Europeans just having a great time together.”

Be My Guest with Ina Garten premieres Sunday, Oct. 19 at 11 a.m. ET/PT on Food Network and streams the next day on HBO Max.