It rained Saturday night in New York. Someone told me two inches in one hour in Central Park. A deluge. And then it cooled down making the way for a beautiful Father’s Day.
On socialite bloggers, fashionista philanthropists and and life in the Big Media City. Sunday’s New York Times ran a profile on the front page of their Style Section called “When Old Money Marries New Media.” This was a social/media piece about Melissa Morris, the young wife of a scion of Old New York (read Old Money) Chappy Morris and her web log “Melissacmorris.com” in which she records her daily happenings.
According to the reporter, Lauren Lipton, Mrs. Morris’ blog is getting more and more popular with a certain female mindset. Ms. Lipton told me this when she interviewed me for the piece. However, the real interest in Melissa Morris is NOT so much her blog but how did a girl come out of nowhere and catch one of the best catches of them all where everyone else (who tried) failed; where others had given up even before trying convinced marriage was a lost cause.
NYSD readers recognize Melissa and her husband as they are people who get around. I’ve known Chappy since I started this beat about 15 years ago. He’s one of the nicest men in New York, and that is said as a matter of fact. His family descends back to the founding not only of the city but of the country. There was a Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence and another who named his real estate holdings after himself: Morrisania in the Bronx. Chappy’s mother, Edna Morris, was a well known, very social, no-nonsense grande dame in the mid-20th century when grande dames still existed.
Chappy was the classic confirmed bachelor. Always with a girlfriend, even a steady, or was squiring around a number of attractive and social New York women, he was, from what I observed, he was open to type, so to speak, and he likes the company of women. Furthermore although never extravagant, he was a generous and sensitive friend to those women he liked and went around with. More than one bill or two might have been picked up for someone in a squeeze that month. And good restaurants were always on his list, as well as good benefit galas, good Hamptons beach houses and good fun. Plus he’s a gent.
So when he took up with Melissa Stanley several years ago, the watchers were watching. Not that there was much concern about her chances. After all, until she was with Chappy, she was pretty much a new girl in town. According to the Times, they met when she was his personal trainer. Okay; that’s not a first in the woods of Park Avenue and Fifth. Trainers are the 21st century airline stewardess.
He’d been dating Taylor Stein, the New York born and bred one-time restauarateur and social girl. They had sort of lived together (Taylor always kept her own apartment). Eventually the bloom was off that rose and Chappy was footloose again. (Taylor now lives in Los Angeles where she has a house in Bel Air and is raising her daughter Djuna, her child by William Lauder). That’s where Melissa came into the picture.
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| Chappy and Melissa hitting the town. |
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According to Lipton’s piece, Melissa’s thirty years younger than Chappy. This was a further explanation of Why Never for him. In fact, no one took anyone to be a contender for Chappy walking down any aisle except at Lincoln Center or a Broadway theater. Chappy really was a confirmed bachelor – he’d got to fifty without tying the knot.
According to the Times they went together for five years. To the rest of us it got so they seemed like a permanent item, i.e., man and wife. Although there were still some holdout hopers hoping. And then suddenly they got married, and he even gave her his mother’s ring. A diamond is forever, right?
And so now there’s our girl, reclining on her Recamier with her adored whippet by her side in the New York Times for all the world to see. The photo, by Robert Wright is compelling, if misleading, but a good sell for the piece. It says “lady of leisure” with the subtext telegraphed to some quarters: “eat yer heart out” -- because without a doubt, there were some green eyes reading the front page of the Style Section yesterday. And they were the mantra of the Park Avenue (and Fifth) lovelorn: “why her?” Well, she’s not really a lady of leisure. She’s actually more of a worker bee. An organizer of activity. And get those pecs and calves. Exercise, baby; that’ll do it. Serious. Exercise.
NYSD readers may know Melissa from some of her travel pieces that she’s done for us. It’s been interesting to watch the changes that occurred. In some ways it would seem as if nothing has changed. Chappy still is a good pal to some of his longtime women friends, and occasionally an escort if the wife’s out of town on one of her travel projects (she travels with her mother if not with her husband).
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