• July 07, 1997
• Vol. 48
• No. 1

Raging Romance

Quietman Robert De Niro Speaks Up to Say 'i Do'

NO NEED TO SPELL THINGS OUT for John Novi. Early last month the owner of the Depuy Canal House restaurant in the picturesque Upstate New York town of High Falls got a call asking him to open his four-star bistro—normally closed Monday through Wednesday—to a private party Tues., June 17. The caller, Grace Hightower, 42, Robert De Niro's longtime girlfriend, offered no explanation. And Novi asked for none. "She told me, 'Just write, Love, Bob and Grace, on a special menu,' " says Novi. "So I sort of surmised something was up."

A wedding reception, to be exact. A year and a half after De Niro, 53, reportedly gave the former flight attendant a 10-carat emerald-cut diamond ring, the two cemented their on-again, off-again romance in a private ceremony in New York. Afterward the party of 11, including De Niro pals Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci, feasted on a five-course meal that featured wakami and lobster in rice paper and poussin breast with cranberry quince stuffing—and listened to Pesci crack jokes till past midnight. Says a staffer: "There were congratulations all around."

But not a whisper about the Raging Bull's rocky romantic past—including a 12-year marriage to actress Diahnne Abbott that ended in 1988 and a relationship with former model and restaurateur Toukie Smith that ended after about a decade in the early '90s. Actor Chuck Low, De Niro's friend and Manhattan neighbor, calls Hightower "the most stable of his girlfriends," adding that the couple married for the best possible reason: "They are in love."