tiger woods' 9/11 mistress
him:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/29/tiger- ... tiger.html
Sports' First Billion-Dollar Man
Kurt Badenhausen, 09.29.09, 07:25 PM EDT
Tiger Woods cracks the 1 billion mark in career earnings.
her past:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/gall ... 10,00.html
Rachel Uchitel lost her fiance James Andrew O'Grady in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.
her present:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/t ... olBBteiOFL
"Rachel Uchitel: The night I met Tiger Woods & my life spun out of control"
detailed:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/23 ... 3927.shtml
Alleged Tiger Woods Mistress Rachel Uchitel Suffered 9/11 Tragedy Before Spotlight
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Rachel Uchitel has been adamant that she is not having an affair with Tiger Woods, the golf great whose strange Nov. 27 car accident still remains a mystery despite an ongoing and frustrated police investigation.
PICTURES: Tiger Woods Mistress Rumors
But the 34-year-old New York nightclub hostess' love life has been in the spotlight before, for radically different reasons.
Photo: Rachel Uchitel hold's her dead fiance's photo shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
PICTURES: Tiger Woods Mistress Rumors
Uchitel first gained attention in the wake of September 11, when she lost her fianc?, Andy O'Grady, in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
Her grief stricken photo appeared in the New York Post as she clutched her fianc?'s picture.
CBS Affiliate WCBS-TV spoke with her a year after the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero.
"When I think of Andy I no longer cry. I smile and I laugh. I'm at that point now. I can go on everyday knowing that somebody like him chose me to love," Uchitel told the New York station.
But the tragedy also led to an unlikely new love, according to a 2004 New York Times profile that showcased Uchitel and her new husband Steven Ehrenkranz.
On Sept. 11, Ehrenkranz had left the Twin Towers shortly before the first plane made impact, according to the paper.
Days later Ehrenkranz was shocked to see Uchitel's photo in the New York Post. The two had attended private school together as teens, said the Times. Two years later they ran into each other at a party and started a long friendship that turned into a courtship. The pair married on Nov. 2004.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/fashi ... 2VOWS.html
On the morning of 9/11, Steven Ehrenkranz had just finished a round of job interviews at the Cantor Fitzgerald offices at the World Trade Center. Anxious to get back to work at another brokerage firm nearby, he declined to stay for one last interview. As he reached his office, he turned to see the first plane hit. He said he learned not long after that "everyone I just interviewed with was dead."
A few days later, he was stunned when he recognized the tearful blond woman in a photo on the cover of The New York Post — holding a picture of her fianc?, James Andrew O'Grady, who was missing in the towers' collapse.
"'Oh, my God, that's Rachel,' " he recalled thinking. He knew the woman, Rachel Uchitel, from their private-school days in their early teens, but they had been out of touch for years.
Mr. Ehrenkranz had not seen her since the mid-1990's, when he and his friend Jason Strauss, who was then dating Ms. Uchitel, were partners in a party-planning venture. In a flirtatious moment, he said, he and Ms. Uchitel joked that "in another world," they would be dating. It was indeed another world in 2003 when he ran into her at a New York Halloween party.
Ms. Uchitel received confirmation in early 2002 that her fianc? had died. But she had gone though a delayed grieving process. "I was very strong after the night of 9/11," said Ms. Uchitel, who was then a television producer at Bloomberg, the business news company. But two years after the attacks, she experienced a "massive breakdown," she said. "I couldn't get through the day."
She added: "I felt like everyone else had forgotten about it. I was resentful. Lonely." Her grief rekindled old sorrows, the death of her father in 1991, and that of a grandfather who had been an owner of the New York nightclub El Morocco, in 2000. She took a leave from her job and sought therapy.
At the Halloween party, her conversation with Mr. Ehrenkranz had been casual. But they got together a few weeks later, when both happened to be in Florida. At dinner with friends in South Beach, one of them, Turney Duff, said, "you could kind of tell there was something between them."
What followed was a friendship that included "nights just watching TV for four hours holding hands," said Mr. Ehrenkranz, now 29 and a trader for Stuart Frankel & Company. Ms. Uchitel, also 29, added, "I kept thinking, `Why can't I find someone I connect with like Steven?' "
After the holidays that followed the friendship took a serious turn. It was helped along by the fact that despite Ms. Uchitel's tragic romance, "She never made me feel like I'm playing second fiddle," Mr. Ehrenkranz said.
Mr. Ehrenkranz began spending nearly every night at Ms. Uchitel's apartment; they chose hers rather than his in part because she wanted to be with her dogs, which she had acquired in the wake of 9/11. "She treats them like they hold the secret to world peace," Mr. Ehrenkranz said with a laugh.
The dogs do hold special meaning for Ms. Uchitel. She and Mr. O'Grady had purchased one about a month before 9/11. When that dog suddenly died of distemper, Ms. Uchitel said, she was disconsolate. "But Andy kept telling me, `The dog didn't know he was going to die. He had a great life with us for a month,' " she recalled.
"Andy taught me amazing lessons," Ms. Uchitel said, including how to appreciate the present moment. Echoing sentiments reminiscent of Emily's in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," Ms. Uchitel added: "It's great to have a person in your life now, to go through the joys and sorrows together. Everyone assumes you're going to live till 90 years old; it's not necessarily true."
On the evening of Nov. 20 she and Mr. Ehrenkranz were married in the Deco splendor of the new Cipriani event space in the Toy Building in New York. In lieu of bouquets, bridesmaids carried candles, placing them on pedestals, creating an inner circle under the huppah. The sylphlike bride floated up the aisle in a satin Reem Acra gown for an interfaith ceremony led by Dr. David M. Posner, the senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El in New York, along with the Rev. Scotty McLennan, the dean for religious life at Stanford University. A quartet played "Ode to Joy" at the end of the service as the bride raised her bouquet in jubilation.
"She's so brave to be vulnerable again," said Annelise Peterson, the maid of honor, on the day before the wedding. (She, too, lost her boyfriend on 9/11, and her brother.) "It gives the world, and me, so much hope."
final outcome:
Four months later, they divorced.
the 9/11 pic of her was a very effective psyop. some examples of its success:
http://www.9-11heroes.us/v/James_Andrew_OGrady.php
I am from Salem Oregon, and our paper on September 14, 2001 had a heart-wrenching picture of Rachel Uchitel on the front "searching for her missing fiance". I've always wondered her story, their story, and how she is now. I cried over this picture at least a dozen times over the past few years and as I pull it out of my box again today, I cry for her and what she went through. You and your family has been in my prayers and will continue to be forever because I'm sure your memories will not be forgotten.
*** Posted by Sarah Wilson on 2003-09-11 ***
http://www.canada.com/national/features ... 82852158AE
But there is one single image, among the thousands published in newspapers, magazines and on the screen this past year, that I can't get out of my head.
In it, 26-year-old Rachel Uchitel of Manhattan stands, shoulders pitched forward in despair, outside Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, two days after the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground.
Her 32-year-old fiance, Andy O'Grady, is surely dead, somewhere in the crush that was the South Tower. He was a bond salesman with Sandler O'Neill & Partners, 104 floors up, and they were newly engaged.
In the photo, Rachel is weeping before the photographer, pleading with him and anyone who will listen to help her find Andy.
I first saw the picture on the front page of another paper, and couldn't stop looking at it. At Rachel's broken face, at her beauty, her stylish white tank top so clean and bright against the suffocating grey of the street, at her well-cut blonde hair, and the way she cradled the flyer printed with details and pictures of Andy.
I couldn't take my eyes off her engagement ring, which was glorious and nudged the side of the flyer, as if it was holding Andy close to her body. She was tanned and slim, wearing exquisite simple jewellery.
She was, is, the quintessential American beauty.
And this, this, I thought, is surely the target of the terrorists, this is what is being attacked, this country's richness of spirit, its youthful, confident power, its promise of the future, its bountiful hope, its open vulnerability.
yet, i cant find a copy of that pic anywhere, not quickly or readily at least...
http://tinyurl.com/yzfdmpu
http://tinyurl.com/yg7opsn
http://tinyurl.com/yje9ukv
but here it is:
http://www.balkanforum.info/f9/so-erleb ... ber-74710/
http://tinyurl.com/yzemwen
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/2009/10/26 ... -star.html
http://www.philippraess.ch/0911/leute/1109-03.jpg
notice all the sources are foreign, none in english or from an english speaking site. the only nameworthy american english source with that pic (excluding cbs's recent one, which does not show up when using common search terms):
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/specials ... st-attacks
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/archive/ ... 848658.jpg
Copyright 2001 The Herald-Dispatch
Rachel Uchitel makes an emotional plea as she searches for her fiance James Andrew O'Grady outside Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on Sept. 13, 2001. O'Grady was working on the 104th floor of Tower 2 of New York's World Trade Center that was destroyed in the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/CP,Andrew Vaughan)
she used to work for bloomberg as a news producer:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/rac ... id=9211200
After the terror attacks of 9/11, Rachel Uchitel "had something of a breakdown and felt very lost," leaving behind a career as a news producer in New York to work the door of a Las Vegas nightclub, glad-handing celebrities and closely protecting their privacy, her mother told ABC News.com.
http://news.aol.com/article/club-promot ... ies/793166
Uchitel's mother Susan defended her daughter to ABC News, noting that the 34-year-old was a news producer for Bloomberg until her fiance died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Her friends opened a nightclub in Las Vegas and invited her to join them," her mother said, explaining how her daughter's new career began.
http://www.sundayvision.co.ug/detail.ph ... sId=455246
DISASTER 9/11: The World Trade Centre. Inset is Rachel
ON September 11 2001, 32-year-old investment banker Andy O'Grady died trying to escape from the World Trade Center. His fiancee, Rachel Uchitel, 30, a TV news producer, thought she would never find love again.
Andy was watching the weather channel when I handed him the photographs I’d just developed from our recent trip to Greece.
He wanted to take them to show people at his office, the investment bank Sandler O’Neill and Partners, where he was a managing director.
It was on the 10th floor of the World Trade Center. I had a funny feeling he was going to lose the pictures so I asked him to give me the negatives first. How could I have known they’d be the last pictures ever taken of us together?
I grabbed my keys and left for work at 5:00am without even kissing him goodbye.
Shortly after the first plane hit the north tower, Andy called and said, “Rachel, I’m watching people either jump or get pushed out of the window.”
Although he sounded frantic, I never thought he was in any danger — it wasn’t his building that was on fire. In fact, since Andy had such a great bird’s eye view of what was happening, he was telling me what he could see and I was passing it on to our anchor at Bloomberg Financial News, who was reporting the story on TV.
Out of curiosity, and not because I was concerned about Andy’s safety, I asked him if his building was being evacuated. He told me it wasn’t, but as time went on he became more distraught. The last thing he said to me was: “I’ve got to get out of here.”
On the monitor moments later, I watched as the second plane slammed into the south tower. Now, reporters were referring to the story as an act of terrorism. I began to panic as I dialled Andy’s phone number. When he didn’t pick up, I tried to email him. Nothing.
I knew it was Andy’s building that had collapsed because he always used to tell me: “I work in the one without the steeple on it.”
I was numb with shock. I remember falling to the floor and thinking: “There’s no way he’s going to be dead. This can’t be my life. I’m not going to be that girl who loses her fianc? in the World Trade Center.”
I stayed at work until 5:00pm that day, wanting to be where the most up-to-the-minute news was being reported.
When I got back home, I looked at the pillow he’d slept on the night before, a pair of socks, the underwear he’d left near the hamper in the bathroom after getting into the shower.
For the next 36 hours, I did nothing but sit by the telephone and stare at the front door, waiting for Andy to come home. As the minutes grew longer, I knew there was less and less chance of him returning. I just cried and screamed in desperation.
My mother gave me Valium to calm my nerves. I simply couldn’t believe what was happening. After seeing people on TV gathering at hospitals and putting up flyers I decided to do the same.
On Thursday, September 13, I went to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital. I was in a total daze.
Soon, a bunch of photographers approached me and asked me who I was looking for. The next thing I knew I was on the cover of every newspaper in the world. It was good to have my most vulnerable moment photographed like that because it meant people wanted to know who Andy was, they wanted to help find him. Receiving hundreds of letters of support made me feel as if I wasn’t going through this alone.
Andy’s body was discovered on New Year’s Eve. I called the morgue’s office, trying to put the pieces together and figure out how he was killed. When they wouldn’t release any details I became hysterical. All I know is that his cause of death was due to blunt trauma, which basically means he was hit by something.
How could something that started out brilliantly end so badly? Andy and I often used to laugh about how we met. In fact, he loved telling the story.
In September 1998, friends set us up on a blind date. Before we’d even had a chance to go for dinner, he called me at work and offered to give me a lift home. I thought it was a really sweet thing to do, but I later discovered he just wanted to check me out before he committed to a date! I turned the lift down anyway, because I had a really bad outfit on that day. Undeterred, Andy showed up at my apartment that evening with ginger ale and bagels.
Andy’s funeral was on January 18, 2002 and for the next 18 months I was really strong. He’d taught me to create a foundation for myself so that if anything ever happened to him, I could stand on my own. It was a very big thing for him. He would often tell me, “I don’t want you to need me, I want you to want me around.”
In July 2003, I took a leave of absence from Bloomberg — the events of September 11 had finally caught up with me. I was suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
By October 2003, after having sought therapy, I was finally able to say goodbye to my past and to Andy. It was at this time that I ran into an old childhood friend, Steven Ehrenkranz, 30, a trader on the New York Stock Exchange. We bumped into each other at a Halloween Party.
We’d known each other since our school days, at the age of 12. Steven said he’d read about what happened to me in the New York Post and that he was sorry. He later told me that he’d been in the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, interviewing for a job with a brokerage firm, shortly before the first plane hit. All the guys who he’d been interviewed with were now dead.
After the party, we quickly became best friends. Steven would come over every day to watch TV or our all-time favourite film, Serendipity, or he’d help me walk my two dogs, Rudy and Ozzie.
I always thought Steven had an amazing personality. He was so funny, so confident, so generous — and I remember thinking: “The girl who ends up catching his eye and heart will be the luckiest girl in the world.” It never occurred to me that I might be that girl.
Early in 2004 Steven asked me, “Don’t you think it’s weird that I’d rather be with you than with the girl I’m dating?” I answered: “No, I think we have a really great friendship.”
When he suggested we try dating, my initial thought was, “No way.” I wasn’t sure if I could be physically attracted to someone I’d known for so long, but secretly I was thinking: “Why can’t I find someone I connect with like Steven?” Inevitably, all the guys I’d been attracted to turned out to be losers. And since I knew, deep down, Steven was the type of person I wanted to be with, we started dating.
Over Valentine’s Day weekend Steven told me he loved me. I wasn’t surprised because I already knew he loved me as a friend; we were so close, I knew he’d do anything for me. When we got together, I remember telling him, “If we’re going to take this step and risk our friendship, you’d better be prepared to marry me.” I didn’t want to have to go through the heartache of losing my best friend just because we wanted to try sleeping together.
In May, almost two years to the day Andy and I were to marry, and one month after Steven and I met, we moved in together. Things might’ve been happening very quickly between us, but in my heart I felt that it was right.
We married on November 20, 2004. It was an interfaith ceremony — Steven’s family is Jewish, mine is Presbyterian. I had eight bridesmaids who carried candles, as opposed to bouquets, and placed them under the canopy where we stood. On that day I felt so lucky and so incredibly happy that, despite losing Andy, I had been able to find someone else whom I could love.
I believe Steven was hand-picked to survive that day so that he could be there for me. Andy would have liked Steven. They share so many amazing qualities. In fact, I often feel as if Steven and Andy were made from the same mould.
I don’t feel bad about having found love again. I try not to think about whether or not this chain of events was meant to be. I’ve made the decision to love and be with Steven for as long as I’m around.
I’d like to start working again, maybe set up my own company. Perhaps in a year or two I’ll fall pregnant. All I know is that I’m going to try and make the most of my life.
GLAMOUR MAGAZINE
Published on: Sunday, 11th September, 2005