Howard Rubenstein Dies At 88; Publicist Helped Shape The City

COMMENTARY

It was October 1996, and the New York Yankees were playing the Braves in the World Series when I got a call asking if I wanted to sit in owner George Steinbrenner's box for game two. Calling it a "box" is pretty much the definition of understatement, as I recall it being substantially larger than my apartment at the time.

The Yankees had been clobbered the night before, and there wasn't a lot of hope that the night would be different (in fact, they would lose that night but then win the next four to take the series).

At one point during the game, Howard Rubenstein, the city's premier publicist who counted Steinbrenner among his clients, brought me over to meet him. Howard made me seem more important than I was.

Afterward, Howard says to me: This is great fun. But never let anything get in the way of writing a story if it's a real story. In the years that I dealt with him, if it was a story, he never told me not to write it. He was always straight with me, never steered me wrong. He was always a mensch.

On Tuesday, he died in his apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue. He was 88 years old.

While many people will remember Howard for his clients — not just Steinbrenner but Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, David Letterman, The Metropolitan Opera — there were also smaller clients such as The New York Tenement Museum and Phoenix House, an addiction treatment nonprofit.

The common factor shared by many clients was that they were New Yorkers — or, at least, based in the city.

Howard loved the city, and much of his work was devoted to making it better.

"New York is a special place," he once told me. "And it's filled with characters, not all of them perfect."

Rubenstein was a child of the city, born in Brooklyn, the son of a police reporter who dabbled in public relations, turning out the occasional press release.

When Howard was unsure of what to do with his life — he dropped out of Harvard — his dad hooked him up with the Menorah Home and Hospital for the Aged and Infirm.

He helped save Times Square, and he helped save the New York Post. And while people love to criticize Times Square for being too clean and others love to hate on the Post because it's, well, the Post, Howard recognized that both were essential to the city.

The same could be said of clients such as Kathy Lee Gifford and Marv Albert, both of whom faced serious problems at times, only to be helped by Howard along with his sons Steven and Richard, who followed in their dad's footsteps. Howard is survived by not only Steven and Richard but by his daughter, Roni, his wife, Amy, and seven grandchildren.

It could be said — and has been — that not every decision Howard made was the right one. He famously backed away from the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999 when Rudy Giuliani, then the mayor, went after them because of an exhibit they had that contained a piece Giuliani personally found disgusting and blasphemous.

He made a very big show of saying he would withhold millions in city funds unless the museum canned the exhibit.

Museum officials, who had hired Howard a couple of months before, went to him for help. Not wanting to get involved in a fight with Rudy — and not being particularly fond of the art in question — he let the museum go as a client.

Howard also famously represented Trump, most notably in his divorce from Ivana. While she tried to portray herself as crucial to Trump's success, Howard coached his client on diminishing her role.

Howard, though, did recognize, when enough was enough.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Howard made a point of letting people know he hadn't worked for him in nearly 20 years.

Despite some of his clients being far from angels, Howard earned loyalty from employees by giving them the freedom to grow, the freedom to pursue things that they found important.

On Tuesday, as word of his death spread, people came forward to talk about what he had done for them.

"I didn't know PR," one longtime associate said. "He didn't care. He felt that I knew people."

And that was what mattered to him.

Howard was a publicist. As part of that, he would offer misdirection, he might try to convince you that it wasn't worth writing, that it was much ado about nothing.

But he was a mensch. He was soft-spoken. He was polite. As far as I was concerned, he never lied.

New York has lost a special character.