She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [33]
As 1994 drew to a close the KBVO staff gathered to bid Steve good-bye. As a remembrance, they gave him a plaque bearing a branding iron that read: “You really made a mark on Austin.” Steve packed up his office and walked out the door a very rich man.
In no time at all he was bored.
“It wasn’t as sweet as Steve thought it would be,” says McEachern. “His two great loves in life had been Elise and the station, and now they were both gone.” Steve had always had an eye for art, and he tried painting, but that failed to catch his interest. One day in early 1995 he called McEachern. “I’m going to marry Celeste,” he said. “Hell, we’re already living together. We might as well.”
In hindsight, Steve’s friends wondered if they should have tried to talk him out of the marriage. Early on there were signs that Celeste had only contempt for him.
As the wedding drew near, Steve called Gene and asked a favor. “Celeste hasn’t any friends in our group,” he said. “Would Sue go to lunch with her?”
“Sure,” Gene agreed. “I bet she’d be happy to.”
Days later, Sue and Celeste met at a Mexican restaurant. What began as an ordinary lunch suddenly took an odd turn. Although Celeste knew that Sue and Gene were close to Steve, she confided in Sue as if they were old friends. Celeste called Steve a fat slob and bemoaned the way she said he ruled her life. “I have to turn my cell phone off to get away, otherwise he’d call me twenty times a day,” she said. “I never have any peace.”
By the time the check arrived, Sue couldn’t wait to leave. That evening she told Gene, “They’re not even married yet, and she’s saying awful things. It makes me uncomfortable. If Steve asks, tell him I’m not going out with Celeste again.”
When Steve’s children heard about his upcoming wedding, they, too, worried. “Why would a woman of thirty-two marry a seventy-year-old man except for his money?” says Becky. She called Paul and Steven III, and they all talked. Afterward, Paul called Steve’s ex-brother-in-law, Judge Harold Entz, who’d remained a close friend. A state district court judge in Dallas, Entz listened patiently, then said what Paul expected to hear: that their father was a bright man and had to be trusted to know what he was getting into. “The bottom line was we all agreed we had to abide by Dad’s decision,” says Paul.
Steve, too, must have remained at least somewhat unsure of the match. As the time for the ceremony neared, he asked David Kuperman, his attorney, who’d handled his personal and business matters for years, to write a prenuptial agreement, limiting his losses if his marriage to Celeste failed.
On the papers Kuperman drew up, Celeste estimated her net worth—mainly clothes and jewelry—at $20,000. She listed no liabilities, ignoring her credit card bills and the $20,000 she’d been ordered by the Arizona court to pay in restitution for the fraud case.
Meanwhile, Steve estimated his net worth—after paying taxes on the sale of KBVO—at $11 to $12 million. Under the agreement, Steve and Celeste each retained their personal property, including Steve’s separate ownership of the house on Terrace Mountain Drive and the lake house. If they divorced before their third anniversary, Celeste agreed she would receive nothing. If the marriage lasted a minimum of three years, however, she was entitled to a onetime payment of $500,000. If married when