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hat does it take to become a successful and happily married power couple in NYC? Spend any amount of time with Rachelle Hruska-MacPherson and Sean MacPherson and you’ll be inclined to think—as paradoxical as this might sound—that the answer is as much about adopting an easygoing outlook on life as it is about being passionately ambitious. Despite being nearly seven months pregnant with her second child, Rachelle is composed and cheerful when she arrives for our cover shoot in early September at the newly opened Marlton Hotel—her husband’s property awash in old world elegance and understated modern touches on West 8th Street. She’s the intrepid founder of Guest of a Guest, an online magazine that gives NYC denizens a glimpse into their hometown’s most exclusive happenings and tips them toward the hottest things to do and see. “Our tagline is ‘people, places, parties.’ Our millions of photos that live on the site are hopefully giving our users the opportunity to feel like they’re part of this community of people that’s sort of separate but symbiotic,” Rachelle explains. “I think we have the best calendar in the city, but besides just covering events, we also like to do a lot of interviews with local tastemakers.” The fair-haired Nebraskan transplant speaks with a quiet confidence that comes only from truly loving what you do as she discusses how her online business launched in 2007 as a simple hobby. “I was working in finance uptown, but all of my friends were downtown in creative jobs, so I was really curious about everything that was happening downtown,” she says. “There wasn’t a thought in my mind of monetizing it—we’re trying to monetize it now—but when I was a 24-year-old just writing, it was just pure.” It was this fresh perspective and genuine voice that had captured the attention of readers around the city, a quality Rachelle still maintains with the help of a crop of new contributors with varied perspectives. Seven years later, the site has expanded to include L.A., D.C., Hamptons, and global editions of its lively nightlife coverage. Rachelle’s husband, Sean MacPherson, has a lot of cachet himself as a classy tastemaker with a golden touch. The proprietor behind a host of popular boutique hotels and chic eateries in the city (and in Montauk and L.A.), he’s launched the iconic likes of The Bowery, Maritime, and Jane Hotels—not to mention the Waverly Inn, a culinary mecca for the media and cultural elite that he co-owns with Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter. The Marlton Hotel is his latest labor of love, and when Sean arrives on scene with their almost-2-yearold son Maxwell in tow, he’s nothing like the snazzy hospitality honcho one might have in mind. The tall, lean Malibu native is at once conversational and deliberative, open to sharing but never self-serious. “What I like about 8th Street is that it’s a little abandoned and derelict, a little bit how The Bowery was,” he says of the potential he’d seen in The Marlton, taking the time to choose his words carefully. “It’s
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New York Family | October 2013
neither here nor there, which gives it a more open canvas.” He savors the property’s storied past, with a list of residents who include Beat Generation writer Jack Keruoac and Andy Warhol’s shooter Valerie Solanas. Two years after Sean acquired the hotel, The Marlton now glows with what he cheekily likes to call a “Honey, I shrunk the Ritz” vibe. On the day of our cover shoot, construction is still being done and final décor touches are still in the works, but the cozy lobby beckons with rich wood paneling and guests have begun to stay in gilded rooms, furnished with luxuriously plush headboards and framed by intricate wall moldings. As with all his other properties, every tasteful design decision for this hotel was a personal and deliberate one. “We call it a ‘baby grand’ hotel because it’s an old building—it’s been there for over a hundred years—and it has very small rooms, but the idea was to make it a very elegant place,” Sean says. “The hotel is reasonably priced but furnished in a very high-end way. It’s accessible luxury.” It takes very little time to see that together Rachelle and Sean make up a delightfully openminded and creative couple—the kind who have become New Yorkers by choice and really enjoy the little serendipities of city life. And it’s an attitude that spills over into their parenting. “I don’t think we over-prepared [as parents], so we’re very comfortable with taking things as they come. Because you can’t plan,” Rachelle says. “The one thing I will say about New York is that everyone’s hyper-successful, so you have a lot of people who are just hyper go-get-y and are super ambitious. Sean has to remind me that it’s all going to work out, and he does a really good job at that.” “Both Rachelle and I believe that we can influence things but not determine them,” Sean adds. “We’re accepting that things don’t always go as expected— and there’s beauty in that.” Their zen-like approach is buttressed by a strong mutual commitment to their partnership. Sean wryly explains: “Rachelle and I are 18.5 years apart, and due to my delay in maturing—” “I’m the old one in the relationship,” Rachelle confirms. “—we entered this at a perfect time for both of us. We were all doing it by choice; it wasn’t like either one of us felt that we had to get married and have children on a schedule,” Sean says. “It’s collaboration. It’s not a competition, it’s not a coercion…” Of course, all this doesn’t mean that the couple sees eye-to-eye on every matter. A laugh slips into Rachelle’s voice as she sounds off on their wardrobe preferences. “Sean loves dressing Maxwell like a punk rock skater, so everything I buy he ends up tearing off the sleeves, and I prefer more preppy. But the mix of the two is kind of genius, and I think that as long as we can both give and take, we’re going to be okay.” Like many couples who hail from very different backgrounds, the duo brings the best of their own continued on page 50
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