Marylou Whitney, British royal family shared passion for horses

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The unofficial queen of the Spa City’s social scene and the Queen of England had a few things in common: They were generally beloved within their respective realms, and adored horses — especially polo ponies and thoroughbreds.

They were also friends. Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at age 96, and Marylou Whitney, who died in 2019 at 93, spent time together at tracks and polo fields, palaces and parties, recalled Whitney’s husband John Hendrickson. Other members of the British monarchy were close to the socialite: The Queen’s younger sister Princess Margaret stayed at the Whitneys’ thoroughbred farm for 10 days during a trip to the Kentucky Derby in 1974.

“They go way back with the entire family,” Hendrickson told the Times Union on Friday.

Whitney was “very close” with King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, as well as Margaret, he noted. “One time, the Queen told Marylou she was so grateful for being a friend to her sister,” he said of the princess, whose troubled final decades were the subject of much media scrutiny.

When Whitney and Hendrickson visited Buckingham Palace in 1997, he led her out onto the sprawling royal balcony. He had a ring in his pocket, and proposed marriage.

Their engagement, he said, happened to coincide with the Duke of Edinburgh Awards at St. James Palace, where the couple had dinner with the royal family the same night.

Hendrickson recalled the response of Prince Philip, Elizabeth’s husband and the awards’ namesake, upon hearing the news of their engagement: “I’m happy to do the engagement party, but I won’t be doing the wedding.”

Hendrickson is not sure how Whitney came into the royal family’s orbit, but believes she was introduced to them by her second husband, Cornelius “Sonny” Vanderbilt Whitney, who died in 1992. (His marriage to Marylou was his fourth and final trip to the altar.) In addition to his involvement in thoroughbred racing, Sonny had played and promoted polo internationally — a passion shared by Charles.

Hendrickson has photos of Marylou Whitney bestowing polo trophy cups on the Prince of Wales as well as a pile of annual Christmas cards from Charles and his second wife Camilla, who now bears the title of queen consort.

“They all knew (Marylou) very well,” Hendrickson said.

At the Queen’s final visit to the Kentucky Derby in 2007, the Palm Beach Daily News reported, Elizabeth actually rose for Whitney when she arrived. The paper noted that Whitney was the only person at Churchill Downs who got that particular form of royal treatment. 

Hendrickson also remembers being seated next to Camilla at her first official dinner at Buckingham Palace — a major step in the royal family’s careful public handling of her relationship and eventual marriage to Charles years after his divorce from Princess Diana.

Hendrickson and Whitney, separated in age by four decades, understood the sort of tabloid attention the royal couple had been subjected to, albeit at a far lower wattage.

He said he gave Camilla some advice that night: “Happiness is the best revenge.”

Despite the late Queen’s love of horse racing, Saratoga Springs never received a royal visit. Her only upstate New York appearance appears to have been in June 1959, when she briefly crossed the border from Canada — accompanied by Prince Philip and then-Vice President Richard Nixon — to a hydroelectric plant in Massena as part of the ceremonies that opened the St. Lawrence Seaway.