Who is Shelby Bryan? Anna Wintour splits with husband after 16 years marriage amid $1.2M tax scandal
Anna Wintour and her husband Shelby Bryan have reportedly parted ways after 16 years of marriage. According to reports, their relationship has been cooling since 2013 and the 70-year-old Vogue editor and the Texas-born 74-year-old investor have only rarely been seen in public together since then.
The power couple began dating back in 1999 with their romance causing quite a stir among New York's elite because Bryan reportedly walked out on his wife to be with Wintour. At the time, the media maven had herself just divorced her psychiatrist husband David Shaffer. She has two children, a son and a daughter, now grown-ups with her ex-husband — 35-year-old Charles and 33-year-old Bea. Shaffer and Wintour were married from 1984 until 1999.
Anna and Shelby remained together without tying the knot until 2004 when they wed in a top-secret ceremony. In 2007, some light was shed on their marriage in an article with Observer. Wintour, known for her cold exterior, had allegedly "softened" after meeting Bryan, claims a source in the article. “She smiles now and has been seen to laugh,” a source told the publication.
In 2013, Wintour and Bryan’s marriage seemed to go downhill when it was reported that he owed $1.2 million in back taxes to the IRS. While the pair were often pictured together at multiple events, that seemed to drop off after the scandal came to light.
Bryan, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who helped raise funds for Obama's re-election campaign, owed the money to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) since 2006, according to court filings obtained by The Daily Telegraph from Texas. He was also pursued for outstanding Texas property taxes and has had energy companies he owns in the state chided by local authorities for falling behind on their financial filings.
Bryan is said to have a fortune of $30 million when he left his second wife, Katherine, to be with the fashion mogul. Bryan said in an interview with the publication that he received the tax bill after "unravelling" a stockholding arrangement that was previously used as a loophole by investors to delay paying tax, before it was banned by US authorities in 1997. He said, “I've paid Harris County so much money in so many taxes, and that's the only time it went awry."
He added, "I mean it was my fault, you know people in the office weren't doing their job - but it was kind of an exceptional situation." Bryan claimed he was "on schedule" with his payments to the IRS and hadn't paid the full bill immediately, because he "didn't have the cash".