HER AUTOCRATIC TREATMENT OF employees and her cavalier disregard for the law earned Leona Helmsley the nickname Queen of Mean, but one man, at least, knew her kinder side. When her billionaire husband, Harry, died of pneumonia at 87 on Jan. 4, she was, as always, there to look after him. "She was totally devoted," says New York City real estate executive Bruce Warwick, a friend. "When he went to the hospital, she went. She stayed in an adjoining room and ministered to him."

But Leona had done all that she could for Harry. "My fairy tale is over," she said, as she ordered the floodlights dimmed on the Empire State Building—the crown jewel of the Helmsley partnership holdings, which include some 50,000 apartments and 27 hotels across the country. Before they met, Harry, a Quaker who began work as a $12-a-week office boy in New York City in 1925 and bought his first building for $1,000 during the depths of the Depression, lived the life of a staid—if successful—businessman with first wife Eve, whom he divorced in 1971 after 33 years of marriage. The following year he wed flamboyant former model Leona Roberts, a top-earning broker at one of his real estate sales offices.

Together they entertained lavishly at Dunellen Hall, their 28-room Greenwich, Conn., mansion, and at a Central Park South penthouse with a rooftop swimming pool, where Leona, 76, threw annual I'm Just Wild About Harry birthday bashes each March 4. The public ostentation ended abruptly in 1989 when Leona was convicted of tax evasion in federal court and began serving 18 months in prison. Harry, also indicted, was found mentally unfit to stand trial. After Leona's release the couple lived in seclusion, but their love affair never ended. Says Leona: "I lived a magical life with Harry."