Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski — known to family and close friends as Stan — is the eldest son of American heiress and fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt and world-renowned British conductor Leopold Anthony Stokowski. Born in New York City on August 22, 1950, he is the older half-brother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, a landscaping businessman based across New York and New England, and one of the most consistently private figures to come out of one of America’s most-publicised family names.
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Quick Facts: Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski
| Full Name | Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski |
| Born | August 22, 1950 — New York City |
| Age | 75 (as of March 2026) |
| Parents | Gloria Vanderbilt and Leopold Anthony Stokowski |
| Known As | Stan |
| Career | Landscaping businessman, New York and New England |
| First Marriage | Ivy Strick (married June 18, 1981) |
| Current Spouse | Emily Goldstein (married September 29, 1996) |
| Children | Aurora Stokowski Mazzei, Abra Stokowski, Myles Stokowski |
| Half-Brother | Anderson Cooper (CNN anchor) |
His Parents: A Marriage That Made Headlines From Day One
Stan’s parents married on April 25, 1945, the day after Gloria’s divorce from her first husband, Hollywood agent Pat DiCicco, was finalised. The ceremony took place in Mexicali, Mexico. Gloria was 21. Leopold Anthony Stokowski was 63. The age gap was 42 years.
His father was already a global figure by then. Leopold Anthony Stokowski had built the Philadelphia Orchestra into one of the world’s most celebrated ensembles, appeared in Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940), and pioneered the orchestral seating arrangements that most major orchestras still use today. He was the first symphonic conductor in history to achieve anything close to celebrity status.
Gloria, for her part, had just inherited control of a $4.3 million trust fund from her father and had spent most of her childhood at the centre of a bitter, nationally covered custody trial that the press dubbed the “trial of the century.”
In a 2016 interview on the Diane Rehm Show, Gloria described the speed of it: she had known Stokowski for a week before agreeing to marry him three weeks later. She also acknowledged, looking back, that he had come to represent the father figure she had never had. Over time, she said, the marriage became controlling. While Stokowski toured, Gloria found herself increasingly isolated.
Their two sons arrived during the marriage’s middle years. Stan was born in 1950, his brother Christopher Stokowski on January 31, 1952. The couple divorced in October 1955, when Stan was five years old.
Childhood: Between New York and London
Stan grew up primarily in New York City but spent significant time in London, splitting his early years between his father’s homes on both sides of the Atlantic. He attended school in London as a child before returning to the United States as a young adult.
One of the few documented records of his early years is a 1958 photograph taken by Carl Van Vechten, the acclaimed American photographer, showing a young Stan alongside his brother Christopher. That photograph is now held in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
His Career: A Deliberate Distance From the Family Name
Stan Stokowski did not go into music, fashion, or media. He built his career in business, specifically in landscaping and related services, running multiple companies across New York, New England, and England that served high-end residential clients.
There are no press profiles attached to his name. No company websites, no industry awards, no trade coverage. His reputation, by all accounts, was built on word of mouth and results. It has stayed that way for decades.
Marriages and Children
First Marriage: Ivy Strick (1981)
Stan married Ivy Strick on June 18, 1981, at their farm in Saugerties, New York. The ceremony was officiated by Justice Richard I. Ryan.
Ivy came from a prominent family. Her father was Louis Strick, president of the Pentalic Corporation, and her mother was New York-based artist Racelle Strick. Ivy herself worked as a writer and had studied at the Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York University, St. John’s College in Annapolis, and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley.
They had two daughters together:
- Aurora Stokowski Mazzei (born March 1983) — founder of Aurora Oro Fine Jewelry, a freelance copy editor at Quill Content, and a writer and artist at AVSM Studio. Aurora is married to New York-based investor Anthony Thomas Mazzei. They have two children, making Stan a grandfather.
- Abra Stokowski (born February 1985) — lives entirely out of the public eye.
The couple later divorced. No date or reason has ever been confirmed publicly.
Second Marriage: Emily Goldstein (1996)
Stan married Emily Goldstein on September 29, 1996, at a private home in Wainscott, Long Island. The ceremony was officiated by town justice Charles S. Edwards.
Emily is the daughter of Pauline and Samuel Goldstein of West Chester, Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of Vassar College and works at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in East Hampton, Long Island, where she organises exhibitions of rare books and manuscripts. She is 14 years younger than Stan.
They have one son together: Myles Stokowski, born in 1998.
Three Losses in Eleven Years
The decade between 1977 and 1988 brought three significant bereavements to Stan’s immediate world.
His father, Leopold Anthony Stokowski, died on September 13, 1977, in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England, at the age of 95. Stan had just turned 27.
Four months later, on January 5, 1978, his stepfather Wyatt Emory Cooper, Gloria’s fourth husband and Anderson’s father, died during open-heart surgery at the age of 50. Anderson Cooper was ten years old.
The hardest loss came a decade after that. On July 22, 1988, Stan’s half-brother Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, aged 23, died by suicide, falling from the 14th floor of Gloria’s Manhattan apartment while she watched. In the 2016 HBO documentary Nothing Left Unsaid, Gloria said losing Carter was worse than anything she had faced before, including the custody battle of her own childhood. Stan was 37 when Carter died.
In the years after Carter’s death, Gloria grew noticeably closer to both Stan and Anderson, the two sons who remained present in her life.
The Christopher Stokowski Estrangement
Stan’s younger brother Christopher cut off all contact with the family in 1978, at the age of 26, following a dispute involving Gloria’s psychiatrist, Dr. Christ L. Zois.
According to Page Six reporting, Zois had become inappropriately involved in Christopher’s personal life and interfered in his relationship with his then-fiancée, April Sandmeyer. The situation ended the engagement. Sandmeyer told Page Six: “I can’t reveal what happened. It’s very sad and it’s very horrible and it has a lot to do with the doctor. His relationship with Mrs. Cooper was not a normal doctor-patient relationship. She was too much under his influence.”
Christopher reportedly moved first to his father’s old farm in Nether Wallop, England, before moving between Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont over the following years.
Gloria eventually won a $1.5 million legal judgment in 1993 against Zois and her lawyer Thomas Andrews, who she accused of exploiting her financially and emotionally after gaining her power of attorney. The legal victory did not repair the family relationship.
In 2016, after the release of Nothing Left Unsaid, Christopher reached out through April Sandmeyer. Anderson Cooper confirmed the reconciliation to Page Six: “Yes, we did reconnect and reconcile after the film.” Anderson’s uncle Harry Cooper added that Gloria had seen Christopher in person several times in the months following the documentary’s release.
The Documentary, Gloria’s Death, and Her Will
Stan appeared on screen in Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper, the 2016 HBO documentary directed by Liz Garbus and executive-produced by Anderson Cooper and Sheila Nevins. Variety’s official review at Sundance listed him among the credited cast by name. He had also attended the red carpet premiere on April 4, 2016, at the Time Warner Center in New York, alongside his wife Emily.
In September 2012, both had appeared at the opening of Gloria’s exhibition The World of Gloria Vanderbilt: Collages, Dream Boxes, and Recent Paintings at the 1stdibs Gallery in New York.
Gloria Vanderbilt died on June 17, 2019, at her Manhattan home, of stomach cancer. She was 95. Both Stan and Anderson were with her in her final days.
Her will, filed in Manhattan Surrogate Court, left Stan the co-op at 30 Beekman Place, her Midtown Manhattan apartment, valued at approximately $1.2 million at the time. The remainder of her estate went to Anderson. Christopher, estranged for the better part of four decades, received nothing.
The total value of Gloria’s estate at the time of her death was approximately $1.5 million — a figure that surprised many who had long assumed her fortune was near $200 million. In her book The Rainbow Comes and Goes, co-written with Anderson, she had put it plainly about all four of her sons: “Little did I know that you, Carter, Stan and Chris would be the greatest joys of my life.”
Where Is Stan Stokowski Now?
Stan Stokowski turned 75 in August 2025. He continues to live between New York and New England, still runs his landscaping businesses, and is a grandfather through his daughter Aurora, who has two children with her husband Anthony Mazzei. His son Myles, born in 1998 during his marriage to Emily Goldstein, is now in his mid-twenties. His daughter Abra keeps the same distance from public life that her father has maintained his entire adult career.
His last confirmed public appearance was the April 2016 premiere of Nothing Left Unsaid in New York. Since Gloria’s death in 2019, there is no verified record of him in the press.
The Vanderbilt name has followed members of that family into every room they have ever entered. Stan Stokowski walked into those rooms, then quietly chose different ones.
