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Tiegs was not yet a superstar in those early New York years, but Glamour's editors discovered that the magazine sold better with her face on the cover, and they used her again and again. Early on she met Adman Stan Dragoti, then head art director for Wells, Rich, Greene and 15 years her senior. He had been married briefly and bitterly and was gun-shy. They lived together on and off for two years and parted, supposedly for good, three times. Finally he agreed to try marriage again.
That was in 1970. They went to Los Angeles, and for two years, weary of the tedium and pressures of modeling, Cheryl stayed at home, acted as Stan's chauffeur, and lunched out a lot. She got fat. Then one day her scales registered 155. She reacted by stuffing herself with everything in the kitchen. Says Stan: "She started to go up the wall. She hid all the pain of the weight gain. It was bothering her more than she let on to anyone." Finally she was galvanized by a magazine shot of a model in a bathing suit. Within a year she lost 35 lbs. and returned to modeling.
An observer's impression is that Tiegs keeps a lot to herself. Behind her openness there is a great reserve. And behind this reserve there is a private area that almost no one has been allowed to see. It is easy to speculate that it might involve some variety of reckless, wild release, simply because so much control seems to demand some kind of balancing. But the odds are that behind the control there is more control. Her husband, a tall, slim fellow who puts a lot of emotion into his conversation and his gestures and who is forever touching Cheryl on the arm or smooching her behind the ear, says: "She really is what you see. There is no worm in this apple."
A year and a half ago, they bought a $450,000 Spanish mansion in Bel Air, on a hill overlooking Los Angeles and the sea. They do most of their business traveling together and, as if they had just been married, sit down to champagne and dinner of whatever cheese, fruit and nuts are in the fridge.
The new moon is full. Are there no shadows? A diligent reporter finds one and, oddly enough, it involves an awkward picture. Tiegs is passionate about tennis and is ranked fourth among women celebrities in the nation. Not long ago, Us magazine shot her on the court, and she says, moaning low, "They caught me up on my toes, my arm bent, everything wrong." The nation's muse is now sweating pools on the practice court.
When she came back to modeling in the early '70s, after her unsuccessful experiment at being a stay-at-home wife, she had matured enough to graduate from Glamour, which aims at the 18-to-35 set, to Bazaar. Now, her timing still superb, Tiegs has the happy task of picking fruit from the overhanging branches. She has just signed a $65,000-to-$70,000 contract with Simon & Schuster to do a beauty book with a collaborator. There is talk of a weekly beauty-care spot on the Today show. She has discussed sportscasting. There is an easy $250,000 to be had by endorsing a Cheryl doll, she has been assured. She is not rushing to grab the money. "What if I want to be taken seriously as a television personality? You can't have that if you have a Cheryl doll. There's a Farrah doll, but there's no Phyllis George doll."