The Road More Traveled

From The "Not-Quite" Files: The Unpublished Runner-Up For Yesterday's NYT "Vows" Column

By Jesse McKinley

No one expects to meet his/her soul mate in the frozen-food section of the supermarket. Except for Kelly Sanders, that is. Three weeks before she actually met C. Myers Dillingworth IV at the D’Agostino on 76th and Lexington, she had already decided not to take any chances with fate. Their meeting, in her eyes, was only a matter of when, not if. “I knew that C. Myers was exactly what I was looking for. He was passably handsome, rich, and single,” says Ms. Sanders, 28, a
pretty brunette with an easy smile and yoga-enhanced triceps. She first saw Mr. Dillingworth, 38, the financier and heir to the Dillingworth banking dynasty, in a Forbes Magazine “40 Under 40” article. Says the lucky groom, an affable man with a mild paunch and an expanding bald spot, “I usually shy away from the press. The more you let them in, the more they want to know- and frankly, with my history of soliciting prostitutes, abusing various narcotics, and insider trading, I really didn’t want to call attention to myself.” A friend convinced him, however, that appearing in the feature would bring a fresh crop of gold-diggers to his door, which was exactly what the doctor ordered. “I was tired of women who liked me for who I was, not for my money,” he says. “I wanted someone who appreciated the cachet of my last name, someone as superficial as I am, only slightly more vacuous.” Fortunately for Mr. Dillingworth, Kelly Sanders was up to the challenge. Raised in a small town near Duluth, she was transformed at an early age by a chance encounter with Vanity Fair (the book) in English class and another chance encounter with Vanity Fair (the magazine) in her doctor’s waiting room. When she arrived in New York in 2000, she had one goal in mind: find a rich, socially respectable husband. She started by studying the Vows section of this newspaper for clues. “I wanted to know the average age of the brides, what they did for a living. I needed to increase the odds for myself,” she says. She took a part-time job at Sotheby’s and another as a substitute teacher at a private school, hoping to put herself in a more favorable position, at least statistically speaking. But things weren’t working out the way she’d hoped, and after several false leads and dead ends (as Mr. Dillingworth puts it, “those were her Aspartame Daddies- close to the real thing, but really just carcinogenic substitutes at the end of the day.”), Ms. Sanders was close to despair. That’s when she saw the 40 Under 40 list in Forbes, and when she did, she knew she had to act fast. “It was adorable- she found my address and started stalking me, memorizing my schedule, when I entered and left my building,” Mr. Dillingworth says. “And she knew that I stopped by the D’Agostino on Tuesdays after work to stock up on Tofutti, my favorite food of all foods.” Ms. Sanders is visibly moved when he talks about the Tofutti Encounter, as they call it. “I showed up one Tuesday, right when I knew he’d be there. I timed it so that I’d run into him just as he opened the Tofutti case. I’d decided that a conversation about the various flavors would be a perfect ice-breaker,” she says. “Excuse the pun!” chimes Mr. Dillingworth, also smiling fondly at the memory. After a date at The Four Seasons and a few drinks at The Carlyle, they both knew that something special was developing. As Mr. Dillingworth says, “I knew we both had a lot to offer each other. I could have an attractive, calculating wife whose financial dependence rendered her indifferent to my various infidelities, and she could have her handbags, her invitations to social events, and her Park Avenue apartment.” “It really was a match made in heaven!” exclaims Ms. Sanders. They wed at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lattingtown and held a white tie reception at The Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley. “This is the fanciest place I’ve ever seen,”
gushed the bride’s mother, Angela Sanders, a bank teller in Duluth. The groom’s mother, Cecilia “CeCe” Dillingworth, was so choked up she couldn’t even respond. Minutes later, when she finally regained some composure, she managed to whisper, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” For many a bride, truer words could never be spoken. For Ms. Sanders (now Mrs. Dillingworth), however, belief was never part of the equation. “I had my eyes on the prize,” she says, “and I wasn’t going home without a trophy.” Fortunately, neither was Mr. Dillingworth.

posted by She-Ra, Princess of Power @ 6:05 PM