Before There Was #MeToo, There Was Mary Cunningham
- 6 years ago
Before There Was #MeToo, There Was Mary Cunningham
Ms. Cunningham Agee, who had since joined Seagram & Company as a vice president, had consulted her new husband
on the merger, which called “one of the most bizarre takeover battles in American corporate history.”
(At least one article at the time, recapping the events leading to the takeover, prominently noted Mr. Agee’s relationship with “Mary Cunningham, a young woman who was Mr. Agee’s protégée
and whose rapid rise up the Bendix ladder in 1980 provoked a flurry of romantic rumors.”)
In 1988, he and Ms. Cunningham Agee moved to his hometown, Boise, Idaho, where he served as chief executive
of Morrison Knudsen, a construction company, until the board fired him seven years later.
Ms. Cunningham Agee said that until those final weeks, her marriage had been blissful, but people close to the family said the couple had been living in separate wings of their St. Helena home, comparing the arrangement to the 1989 movie “War of the Roses.” Ms. Cunningham Agee confirmed
that they lived on different floors, but said it was because Mr. Agee, whose illness had taken its toll, walked with a cane and couldn’t climb stairs.
(In a later article about that scandal, Forbes referred to Ms. Cunningham as “undeniably appealing.”) Ms. Cunningham
has always said the two didn’t have a romantic relationship until years later, after she left Bendix.
The animosity between Ms. Cunningham Agee and other members of the Agee family — particularly over
that will and whether Mr. Agee was of sound mind when he rewrote it — is the latest dramatic twist to a very public saga that goes back nearly 40 years, when Bill Agee and Mary Cunningham played the central roles in what was arguably the first sex scandal in corporate America.
Ms. Cunningham Agee, who had since joined Seagram & Company as a vice president, had consulted her new husband
on the merger, which called “one of the most bizarre takeover battles in American corporate history.”
(At least one article at the time, recapping the events leading to the takeover, prominently noted Mr. Agee’s relationship with “Mary Cunningham, a young woman who was Mr. Agee’s protégée
and whose rapid rise up the Bendix ladder in 1980 provoked a flurry of romantic rumors.”)
In 1988, he and Ms. Cunningham Agee moved to his hometown, Boise, Idaho, where he served as chief executive
of Morrison Knudsen, a construction company, until the board fired him seven years later.
Ms. Cunningham Agee said that until those final weeks, her marriage had been blissful, but people close to the family said the couple had been living in separate wings of their St. Helena home, comparing the arrangement to the 1989 movie “War of the Roses.” Ms. Cunningham Agee confirmed
that they lived on different floors, but said it was because Mr. Agee, whose illness had taken its toll, walked with a cane and couldn’t climb stairs.
(In a later article about that scandal, Forbes referred to Ms. Cunningham as “undeniably appealing.”) Ms. Cunningham
has always said the two didn’t have a romantic relationship until years later, after she left Bendix.
The animosity between Ms. Cunningham Agee and other members of the Agee family — particularly over
that will and whether Mr. Agee was of sound mind when he rewrote it — is the latest dramatic twist to a very public saga that goes back nearly 40 years, when Bill Agee and Mary Cunningham played the central roles in what was arguably the first sex scandal in corporate America.