I Want What They Have

In a new essay, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg's husband, came out as queer. This makes him the second queer man the iconic designer has married. Some of us have all the luck...

By Audra Heinrichs | May 6, 2025 | 6:24pm

Photo: Getty Images Books Celebrities

This week, a lot of folks are talking about the latest issue of New York Magazine—more specifically, a piece about rich white girl transplants “transforming” the West Village (read: using it as their personal playground with their parents’ paychecks). While I get it, I’m much more tickled by a different story in the magazine.

In an essay titled, “The truth about us, after all these years,” Barry Diller, the billionaire of Diane Von Fürstenberg husband-fame, came out as queer ahead of the release of his memoir, Who Knew. Before I go on, let me just say that I’ve never had much desire to read any white, male billionaire’s memoir until this very moment…

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“While there have been a good many men in my life, there has only ever been one woman, and she didn’t come into my life until I was 33 years old,” the piece begins. “There are many complex aspects of my relationship with Diane von Fürstenberg: romantic love and deep respect, companionship and world adventuring, then disappointment and separation, and finally marriage. We met in 1974, separated in 1981, reunited in 1991, married in 2001, and have spent 50 years intertwined with each other in a unique and complete love.” Sounds like a love story fit for the movies. Who knew, indeed!

Diller, who is chairperson of IAC Inc. (a holdings company), went on to write that their relationship “began with indifference” before “exploding into a romance as natural to us as breathing, surprised us and everyone else.” Apparently, the pair first met at a mutual friend’s party in 1974, when von Fürstenberg was still a princess and married to Egon von Fürstenberg, a playboy prince from Switzerland. Neither paid Diller much mind. But life had other plans, as it usually does.

Ten years later, Egon and Diane divorced. He, too, would later admit that he was queer. Eerily enough, von Furstenberg told New York Magazine that he was bisexual after their initial separation in 1973. And here I thought I had a type!

“I have never questioned my sexuality’s basic authority over my life (I was only afraid of the reaction of others),” Diller further wrote in his essay. “And, yes, I also liked guys, but that was not a conflict with my love for Diane. I can’t explain it to myself or to the world.” You don’t need to, babe! It’s 2025. Everyone’s gay.

Diller called their 24-year marriage “the miracle of my life,” and their connection, “cosmic.”

To all of this I have but one question: Where the hell is my balding queer billionaire???

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