Rielle Hunter was in a business meeting in the lounge of the Regency Hotel in New York City when she saw Sen. John Edwards across the room. He, too, was in a meeting. They eyed each other. And not just once.
She left the hotel but later in the day found herself walking along Park Avenue toward the Regency. As she approached the hotel, she saw John Edwards on the sidewalk.
Face to face, their connection was instant. They spoke briefly, flirtatiously.
They could have left it at that. But they didn't.
Instead, they began an affair, according to Pigeon O'Brien, a friend of Hunter who said Hunter told her all about that first meeting. And Hunter fell in love.
"Head over heels," said O'Brien.
The rest is tabloid history.
When Edwards confessed on national television last month to his affair with Hunter, 44, she was already the focus of the most sensational scandal of the political season.
Edwards' public denial that he is the father of her 6-month-old baby girl was greeted with skepticism in many corners. So was his timeline.
Edwards said in his televised "Nightline" interview that their affair began after she had been hired in the summer of 2006 to produce the Web videos of an informal Edwards before the announcement of his candidacy at the end of December 2006.
O'Brien contends that the two met no later than February 2006 and started their relationship almost immediately.
O'Brien became friendly with Hunter in the 1980s in New York. The two women fell out of touch in the 1990s and reconnected at a Manhattan party for author Jay Mc- Inerney in 2004. O'Brien, 42, runs her own publicity company, concentrating on alt-country and Americana music performers. She also designs websites. She says she helped Hunter -- for free -- construct and maintain her own website, beingisfree.org. Hunter's website no longer exists and she seems to have gone underground.
Indeed, Hunter has spent much of the past few months closeting herself away in Santa Barbara.
But wait. Let's rewind the tape of the life that brought Rielle Hunter, nee Lisa Jo Druck, to that fateful meeting on Park Avenue with Sen. John Edwards.
And her name is pronounced "Ree -- elle."
Hunter's life has been equal parts magical mystery tour and perpetual job quest. She has been a party girl, a minor (but working) actress, a writer of oddly titled compositions, a yoga enthusiast and a spiritual seeker. During the 1980s and '90s, she bounced between coasts and made occasional forays in the world abroad, following one guru or another
