In 1991, 86-year-old billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall met 23-year-old Anna Nicole Smith at a Houston strip club
In 1991, 86-year-old billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall met 23-year-old Anna Nicole Smith at a Houston strip club. Three years later, they married, and within 14 months, his death set off one of the most infamous inheritance battles in U.S. history.
Their meeting at a Houston gentlemen’s club became one of the most sensational stories of the 1990s. J. Howard Marshall II, who had built his fortune through his early investment in Koch Industries, was already among the richest men in America when he met the young model and dancer known then as Vickie Lynn Hogan.
She soon rose to fame as a Playboy model and Guess spokesperson. Their marriage in 1994, when he was 89 and she 26, drew enormous public scrutiny. When Marshall died the following year, Smith was left out of his will entirely. What followed was a decades-long legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice, as Smith fought her late husband’s son for a share of the billion-dollar estate.
The case raised questions about the limits of federal jurisdiction and the cultural obsession with wealth, youth, and celebrity in modern America.
Added Fact: Anna Nicole Smith’s legal battle lasted longer than her marriage itself. She died in 2007, still without ever receiving a definitive share of Marshall’s fortune.




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