Jeanine Pepler, the publicist who represented novelists Jay McInerney and Candace Bushnell, hanged herself Sunday night in her home in Sag Harbor, LI, taking her life the same way Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain did earlier this month. Sources say she was 50.
Pepler, who was raised and educated in Cape Town, South Africa, arrived in New York in 1996 and worked in public relations with the likes of Tina Brown, Michael Eisner, Julian Schnabel and Julie Taymor.
Friends said her body was discovered by her boyfriend, artist Steve Miller. “He is just devastated, as are we all,” said one. “She seemed to be doing great. They had a lot of plans for the future.”
Miller could not be reached for comment.
Pepler moved to Sag Harbor a few years ago and was running a new boutique agency, AKA Life. Her bio on the agency’s website states[1]: “Her guilty pleasures include golf, white Burgundy, Betty’s Greek wraps and her daily early morning romp in the dog run with Violet, her French bulldog.”
Pepler had dated McInerney for six years before they amicably parted in 2005 and she temporarily moved into Bret Easton Ellis’ apartment.
Jeanine Pepler and Jay McInerneyPatrick McMullan/PMC
“We will still love and care about each other even though we’re not together anymore,” Pepler said at the time.
They remained friends after McInerney married publishing heiress Anne Hearst.
In McInerney’s 9/11 novel, “The Good Life,” the dedication reads: “For Jeanine: Who rescued me that day and many days thereafter.”
Pepler had surgery for thyroid cancer in 2004, but a friend said she had fully recovered and had been in good health.
A spokesman for the NY State Police said her death