Who would you say is New York’s hottest bachelor? The Dare? Nico Heller? The Chihuahua-size bodega rat? All wrong. Against all odds, the most in-demand man in the city these days is Bill de Blasio. Hard to believe, I know, but the evidence speaks for itself: In the months since de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, announced their separation, he has been seen in physical contact with not one, not two, but three different women — and his lady du jour has reportedly ghosted her husband for our groundhog-killing former mayor.
Last we checked in with de Blasio, he and McCray were both trying to use the New York Times as a dating app, having revealed in an intimate profile that they were dating other people but “not planning to divorce.” Thanks to some meticulous reporting at the New York Post, we have a pretty solid idea of how their trial separation is going. In September, de Blasio spent three hours making out with an unidentified woman at the Empire Rooftop bar, earning him the esteemed title Bill de Smoochio. One waiter told the tabloid that even though “no one here knows who Bill de Blasio is,” the ex-mayor and this mystery woman had become regulars at the Gossip Girl–famous Upper West Side joint, popping in “at least three times a week” to drink and make out.
As if this behavior were not brazen enough, de Blasio was seen less than a month later wining and dining an entirely different woman at La Mercerie, a Soho restaurant inside the Roman and Williams Guild. The former mayor and this second unidentified woman spent three hours together (this guy sure has a lot of spare evening time, no?) before pausing to hold hands outside the venue. He then walked her to the Broadway–Lafayette Street subway station and gave her a little kiss before she headed underground. Why a member of New York political royalty with a reported six-figure salary is sending his date home on the subway in front of paparazzi cameras, I could not tell you.
And yet de Blasio’s poor post-date transportation etiquette pales in comparison to this new development in the reality-dating show that is his love life. On Wednesday, he was photographed in Noho holding hands with yet another woman, whom the Post identified as Kristy Stark. Stark is the founder and CEO of a Michigan-based educational tools design group called MindsEmerge, which lists de Blasio as one of its “experts & advisors.” Although the Post praised the “chic purple suit” de Blasio was wearing, it failed to mention that he paired it with a black zip-up hoodie and a pair of black gloves. I guess de Blasio’s Joker-meets-Zuckerberg fitspo is, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential; what’s important here is that several of his thickly-gloved fingers were in the loving clutches of Stark’s hands.
But this is more than just another chapter in our slutty ex-mayor’s romantic escapades. It seems that the Post, in its attempts to verify Stark’s identity, accidentally broke the news of the hand-holding incident to her blissfully unaware husband, whom they reached at home with their kids in Michigan. In what the tabloid described as an “awkward phone call,” Owen Stark said, “I don’t know anything about my wife holding hands with Bill de Blasio.” He added that his wife has “denied any sort of infidelity in the past,” but “if she has something to tell me, she’ll tell me.” Meanwhile, Stark told the Post via text that she was “in the process of getting a divorce,” a revelation that was also news to her husband. “I haven’t seen any legal communication or been made aware of anything like that,” he texted the Post. “You know as much or more than I do at this point.” True.
By Friday, things had really spiraled. Owen told the Post that Stark briefly “filled him in on the details” of her relationship with de Blasio but then stopped answering his calls. He said his wife had met de Blasio at “some entrepreneur incubator thing,” which “might have been in Boston” and was “probably within this year.” Despite this lack of clarity, he added that he still wanted to try and fix their marriage. “Kristy is still the most amazing woman I’ve ever met,” he said. “She’s the mother of my children.” Okay, sure, but she also seems to have blown up her life for a man who once publicly defended cargo shorts.
While the Post continues to mediate the Starks’ divorce via text message, it took a moment to check in with McCray, who still lives with de Blasio at their Park Slope home. McCray apparently cracked open the door when a reporter knocked but offered no comment on the matter. Perhaps she, unlike her husband, is making a semblance of an attempt to keep her dating life private?
