Just days after it was announced that she is to marry one of the most famous men in pop, Nancy Shevell already seems to be embracing life as the future Lady McCartney.
It wasn’t just the enormous diamond engagement ring that she was sporting on her finger that bore testimony to her new status.
As a tribute to her new family, the 51-year-old socialite also wore items from her soon-to-be daughter-in-law Stella’s latest fashion collection.
Diamonds are forever: Paul McCartney's newly-engaged fiancée Nancy Shevell unveils her huge engagement ring while shopping in New York
Solid as a rock: Nancy's ring puts the £15,000 sapphire and diamond Sir Paul gave to Heather Mills in the shade
Miss Shevell looked elegant in a simple white top, black trousers and a Stella McCartney handbag, as she was photographed out shopping with her cousin, TV presenter Barbara Walters, in New York this weekend.
But all eyes were on her ring — a bauble which, it must be noted, puts even the £15,000 sapphire and diamond affair that Sir Paul gave to Heather Mills on their engagement ten years ago very much in the shade.
It is a sign not just of the Beatle’s devotion to his new fiancee, but also of his trust. For if any divorcé had reason to be hesitant about marrying again, it is surely McCartney.
But then Nancy Shevell and Heather Mills are about as different in character and outlook as it is possible for two women to be.
Let us wind back the clock to June 2002, when Sir Paul married Heather Mills in a lavish celebration at Castle Leslie in Ireland, complete with food served off gold-rimmed plates, three marquees, a forest of pink flowers, a spectacular fireworks display and a team of 100 security men to protect the high-profile guests from prying eyes.
Contrast: Nancy Shevell and Heather Mills are as different in character and outlook as it is possible for two women to be
The bride wore a £10,000 dress, and, according to the couple’s dewy-eyed spokesman on the day: ‘Overcome by the emotion of the occasion, she briefly faltered and wept while making her vows.’
All you need is love: Sir Paul and Miss Shevell posing here at a dinner last December, are said to 'absolutely dote on each other'
The couple, pictured here with Liv Tyler at a Paris Fashion Show in March, are 'settled and happy' according to friends
Why nothing more? ‘Nancy’s father is richer than God,’ says one of Sir Paul’s friends — a reference to Mike Shevell, who built a £250 million fortune from the trucking business. ‘She really doesn’t need his cash.’
That, ultimately, may have given Sir Paul the confidence to take the plunge again — proposing after a meal of pumpkin ravioli, prepared by Miss Shevell at his apartment in New York a fortnight ago. (Although she didn’t wear her diamond ring to the Costume Institute Gala a few nights later because she has such a horror of publicity).
In truth, Sir Paul has for some time considered himself to have found the woman with whom he plans to grow old.
One of his crowd tells me: ‘When you spend time with them together it is clear they absolutely dote on each other. They couldn’t be closer. The relationship is obviously for keeps and they are settled and happy.’
Another old friend says: ‘The relationship between Paul and Nancy is already far better than the relationship with Heather Mills.
‘He and Heather were fighting like cat and dog even before they got married, while with Nancy it is all very calm, very happy, very chilled out.
‘It’s much more the like the low-key support he had from Linda. She is very quiet like Lin, and has that serenity, too.’
Even so, many assumed he would never risk marrying again. Or, as one old friend put it: ‘It hurt like hell to give the money to Heather.’
Courting: Sir Paul steals a kiss from Miss Shevell at a baseball game in New York in 2009 during the earlier stages of the couple's romance
Though McCartney has a fortune estimated at £500 million, he abhorred Miss Mills’s spending habits.
Since her departure, he maintains only a handful of trusted retainers, mostly security men, and needs to be persuaded to part with money for new suits or trainers. He has been known to dye his hair himself with a £5 packet from the shops. For years, Linda acted as his hairdresser.
These days he does visit a professional hairstylist, but even his own daughter Stella has described him as ‘stingy’. Some say that these are his ‘hippy ways’; others laugh and say: ‘It’s just Paul.’
Either way, the slender, elegant and moneyed Nancy Shevell has adapted very happily into Sir Paul’s preferred lifestyle. She surprised him in the early days of the romance by telling him that she already had her own diamonds, so he wasn’t to spend his money on any of those sort of trinkets.
'Sir Paul has for some time considered himself to have found someone with whom he plans to grow old'
Until the presentation of her spectacular engagement ring, she was perfectly happy to accept some plain silver bits and pieces from Tiffany.
Throughout their courtship, whenever she and Sir Paul were out together in company, she hung back, deliberately ducking out of camera shot to allow him to soak up the limelight.
She has only once spoken about her relationship, calling their liaison ‘a very normal and wonderful’ thing.
His aides like her, too. ‘I can tell you she is universally popular with all of the people in Paul’s life,’ says a source. ‘That was not the case with the previous one.’
In her daily life, Miss Shevell is the vice-president of the successful family trucking business and a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Unlike the former Lady McCartney, she has a blameless past.
In contrast to Sir Paul's ex-wife Heather Mills, his relationship with Miss Shevell is said to be 'very calm, very happy, very chilled out'
She married Bruce Blakeman, her college sweetheart, an impeccably respectable lawyer. The couple grew apart and their divorce was completed on December 9, 2008.
Like Miss Shevell, Sir Paul has a holiday home in the Hamptons and it was there that they first met 20 years ago — the Blakemans got to know Paul and Linda through the local social scene.
Back then, Sir Paul’s children apparently nicknamed her Jackie O — on account of her innate sense of style and penchant for sunglasses — and she has been a family friend for years.
Miss Shevell had breast cancer around the same time as Linda, who died in April 1998, aged 56.
Sir Paul and Miss Shevell’s romance began with a few low-key meetings in the summer of 2007, a few months after he and Miss Mills had separated.
A romantic weekend in November of that year followed, and within 12 months Miss Shevell had converted to vegetarianism for him and dropped her previously Republican views.
She also moved some of her belongings into his British homes, and an agreement formed that they should fly to be with each other whenever they could. Sir Paul needs to be in England often to see Bea, his seven-year-old daughter by Heather Mills, and Miss Shevell has to be in New York to spend time with her teenage son Arlen, who will graduate from high school this summer.
Miss Shevell will be Sir Paul's third wife after Heather Mills and the late Linda McCartney, above, who he married in 1969
Initially, though, the pace of the relationship did cause ructions among Sir Paul’s children.
Stella, in particular, was thunderously annoyed that her father had found a new girlfriend so quickly.
She was extremely resistant to the idea of his getting married again, and I’m told there was sulky behaviour behind the scenes, which reached its peak in the spring of 2008 when Sir Paul floated the idea of embarking on a third marriage.
Stella — mindful of the fact his divorce was only settled in March that year — thought her father was insane to even entertain the thought. She told him acidly: ‘You don’t have to marry every girlfriend you have.’
But as time has gone on Stella’s attitude has softened as Miss Shevell has played a fuller role in family life — buying their birthday and Christmas presents, and hosting family parties after Macca’s gigs around the world.
And the fact that she wears a lot of Stella McCartney designs has undoubtedly helped the bonding process.
Miss Shevell has also proved a capable stepmother to the youngest of the McCartney clan, Bea, whom she and Sir Paul took for a half-term holiday in Cyprus last October.
Which brings us back to the one woman who you might imagine has less flattering things to say about the engagement. How has Miss Mills taken the news?
Astonishingly, friends say the former Lady McCartney is glad that SIr Paul is happy — and that she ‘only hears good things’ about Miss Shevell from Bea.
Miss Shevell giving her blessing to the new match? Perhaps she hasn’t seen the size of the ring yet.
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