Life
She was born in the USA to John Goulandris, a wealthy member of a Greek family of ship owners and operators, and Maria Lemos, from another Greek shipping dynasty. The family lived at the time in the Savoy Palace Hotel, with homes also in Greece, Connecticut, Switzerland and the Bahamas.
She grew up primarily in America (on Fifth Avenue, New York), with holidays spent in Greece, chiefly on the family's ancestral home island, Andros. Her father died when she was three, and her only brother, Peter, recently born.
She studied French civilisation and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, then returned to New York, working in the family offices, her business activities ranging from silver futures trading to horse breeding.
She met Tony O'Reilly briefly, with her brother, in Manhattan in 1989, at the Pierre Hotel, his usual base when staying in New York; he was in New York seeking funding for Waterford Wedgwood. They next met in 1990, after O'Reilly invited her to the Heinz 57 race in Dublin that year (she knew Ireland because of horse racing and breeding and was already considering buying a stud farm there), and a relationship developed, with the two becoming a couple in Lyford Cay the following Easter.
On September 14, 1991, they were married in the Bahamas, Goulandris's first marriage and O'Reilly's second. At the time, O'Reilly was said to be worth around $520 million and Goulandris $450 million, though some reports said the latter was worth more than the former.
In 1996, Tony O'Reilly bid $2.6 million for the 40 carats (8.0 g) diamond engagement ring of Jacqueline Onassis, to give as a gift to Goulandris, who had known the Onassis family, and she, with some Heinz executives, made a naming gift in her husband's honor in 1999 with the O'Reilly Theater in Pittsburgh.
Read more about this topic: Chryss Goulandris
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