My evening with Helen Gurley Brown

One evening about 20 years ago I boarded a St. Louis-bound TWA 727 at LaGuardia. I was headed for a meeting in Las Vegas but, back then, I always flew TWA, which required a change of planes in St. Louis. My ad agency handled TWA’s account and I usually got upgraded to first class, so it was worth the extra hour or so the layover added to the trip.

My seat mate was an elegant older woman. I recognized her instantly. Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan. I saw her on the Today Show all the time as I was getting ready for work.

She smiled. I smiled back. The plane taxied out, and took off. As I usually do when I fly, I was writing something on a legal pad.

Are you writing a speech?” she asked. “No,” I answered. “I’m in advertising. I’m writing an ad."

“How fascinating,” she said. “Do tell me what you’re writing about. I used to work for an ad agency.”

I was writing an ad for Hilton Hotels, and we discussed it for a while. She said she liked my headline.

“Do you travel a lot?” she asked. “Yes,” I replied.

"Do you work for an agency or are you on the client side?"

I said I worked for an agency.

This woman who was old enough to be my mother was, I realized, flirting with me.

“Is it your own agency or do you work for someone?”

“I run a small agency that's part of a bigger agency,” I answered, telling her the name of my agency’s parent company.

She said the CEO and his wife were dear friends and that they had dined together a few weeks before.

  

I stashed my legal pad in the seat pocket and we chatted for the rest of the flight. Helen Gurley Brown, believe me, knew how to talk to a man.

I wasn't sure if I should tell her I knew who she was, so I didn’t.

She said she was flying to Oklahoma to visit her sister, who was in a nursing home.

I mentioned that one of my clients was TWA. She said she always flew TWA. She had a contact in the Manhattan ticket office who always guaranteed she got upgraded to first class. “All I have to do is call him.”

She said that, as long as I knew something about airlines, she would value my opinion. She said she and her husband had won two free Singapore Airlines business class tickets that were raffled at some charity event. “I’ve never flown in business class before,” she said. “Do you think we'll be comfortable on a flight that long?”

I could hardly believe my ears. Not only was Helen Gurley Brown editor of Cosmo, her husband, I knew, because I know these things, was David Brown, producer of, among other Hollywood blockbusters, Jaws and The Sting. The Browns could have easily afforded to charter the Concorde.

“It will be fine,” I assured her. “I’ve heard Singapore is an excellent airline."

Helen said she was originally from Arkansas. That she had come to New York as a young woman and gotten a job as a secretary at an ad agency. I knew that, while she was there, she happened to write a rather famous book.

“You wrote Sex and the Single Girl while you worked at the agency, didn’t you?” I asked. “Yes,” she admitted. I think that, up to then, she had been enjoying the idea that a guy 30 years her junior, not knowing who she was, found her interesting.

“On behalf of men everywhere, thank you,” I said. She laughed at that.

I don’t remember what we had for dinner, but for dessert we were served ice cream sandwiches. Not fancy ones. TWA was bankrupt. Ordinary ones -- the kind you buy in a convenience store. “I adore ice cream sandwiches, don’t you?” she asked, eating hers with pleasure. I left mine on the tray, saying I was watching my cholesterol.

Helen said all the talk about cholesterol was ridiculous, that she ate a hard boiled egg every morning. “It’s the perfect food.”

She told me about growing up in a small town in Arkansas. I told her about growing up in a rural Missouri town. She asked if I was married and if I had kids. I said yes and yes.  She said she was worried about her sister, who was having trouble adjusting to the nursing home. That was why she was going out to see her for the weekend.

Two and a half hours after take-off, we landed during a thunderstorm. Both our connecting flights were delayed. I belonged to TWA’s private club, so I invited her to join me while we waited for our flights. She accepted. I had a cocktail. She had orange juice.

After a while, both our planes were announced and we hugged goodbye. “I hope you have a good meeting,” she said. “I hope you have a good visit with your sister,” I told her.

Helen Gurley Brown died Monday at age 90. Though she penned one of the most revolutionary books of the last 100 years, was editor of one of the world’s most successful magazines, and was married to a Hollywood mogul, there wasn’t an ounce of pretension about her. 

She was, that night, a genuine, smart lady from Arkansas, who knew how to charm a man like no woman I have ever met.  

Rest in peace sweet lady.