Billionaire heiress Ivy Getty may seem the prototypical poor little rich girl – especially now that she’s filed for divorce a little more than two years after her over-the-top, three-day wedding to Tobias Engel in San Francisco.
But while the 26-year-old model may live in the shadow of the so-called “Getty curse,” friends and others familiar with the family say the split is not the result of the deaths, affairs and addictions which have long haunted the oil dynasty.
Instead, they say her marriage to Engel was a rebound during the pandemic from the almost simultaneous deaths of her father, thanks to drugs, and the maternal grandmother who raised her — and not a self-destructive decision.
She married the English-Austrian photographer — whom she met at Paris Fashion Week— secretly in December 2020, then celebrated again publicly and extravagantly in November 2021.
“Tobias was very sweet to her and everyone else but you didn’t feel any great passion there. They almost could have been siblings,” a source told The Post.
Getty was posing at the Save Venice’s Un Ballo in Maschera gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York with Emily Ratajkowski and Nikki Hilton Rothschild last week just as news of her divorce was coming out. Days earlier she had partied in London.
“Ivy grew up in a very bizarre situation being raised by her grandparents in that huge mansion and I think it was very lonely,” a San Francisco socialite who knows the Getty family well told The Post.
“But Ivy herself is lovely and has lovely friends. She doesn’t have anything to do with the drug scene and neither do her friends.
“But I think with the pandemic and losing both her dad and grandmother she was reaching out for a substitute family when she decided to marry Toby.
“Then the world opened up again and it looks like she decided to move on.”
John Gilbert Getty, Ivy’s 52-year-old musician dad, died of heart conditions triggered by an accidental fentanyl overdose in a San Antonio hotel room on Nov. 20, 2020.
Her grandmother Ann Getty, who raised Ivy in the Getty mansion where her reception took place, died at 79, two months before her own son passed.
Ivy was brought up almost since birth by Ann and her husband Gordon Getty, now 90, (who famously maintained a second family with three secret daughters in Los Angeles before being found out) because her father was not capable of caring for her.
Ivy’s San Francisco-based mother, Alyssa Boothby, who calls herself a jewelry designer, was not with Ivy’s father for long — and sources told The Post that Ann and Gordon Getty moved in fast to raise the infant.
Boothby was at Ivy’s wedding and while Ivy has praised both her and her dad on her Instagram account, Alyssa has not been a major figure in her life, they said.
Getty filed for divorce in New York in January and Engel responded by contesting it on March 25.
However, a source told Page Six that the couple has a prenup in place, protecting her famed family’s massive wealth.
“Obviously, being a member of the Getty family, Ivy is careful about legal entanglements,” said the source.
Nancy Pelosi officiated at the 2021 wedding, which Vogue covered.
Attendees included singer Olivia Rodrigo, Princess Olympia of Greece, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco mayor London Breed and Ivy’s maid of honor, “Queen’s Gambit” star Anya Taylor-Joy. Mark Ronson was DJ at a pre-wedding ’60s Mod-themed bash, and Earth, Wind and Fire performed.
After the wedding, the pair returned to life as a photographer and model but were not often seen together.
“She was going out all the time in New York and London and he wasn’t in any of the press pictures of her,” James Reginato, author of 2022’s “Growing up Getty: The Story of America’s Most Unconventional Dynasty,” told the Post.
“I think she was a little bit at a loss during the pandemic and looking for someone to make a life with but it clearly wasn’t meant to last.”
But Reginato echoed others who said that Ivy doesn’t seem to have inherited the Getty tragedy gene, which others in her family seemed to have in spades.
Ivy’s great grandfather was J. Paul Getty, the Minnesota-born founder of Getty Oil who, in the mid-20th century, was the richest man in the world — with a fortune of $1.2 billion (around $9.1 billion today).
He has some 40 descendants, a number of whom have had an outsized share of drama and misfortune over the decades.
In 1973, John Paul Getty III — the patriarch’s 16-year-old grandson (making him Ivy’s second cousin) — was kidnapped in Rome.
His abductors demanded $17 million, which his grandfather wouldn’t pay, leading his captors to cut off his right ear, and his grandfather to hand over the cash, as a loan to his son.
The ordeal, coupled with terrible neglect, ruined the boy’s life. At just 24, he ended up paralyzed as a result of a drug overdose. John Paul III, who was the father of actor Balthazar Getty, died in 2011, at age 55.
In 2015, Ivy Getty’s uncle Andrew Rork Getty, died from an ulcer-related hemorrhage. Andrew, who had been a recluse, was found to have methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death.
Reginato also pointed out that while the Getty personal catastrophes make the headlines, the younger generation of Gettys who include Ivy count among them a number of very successful people.
“There are four distinct branches of the Getty family,” Reginato said. “J. Paul Getty had five sons and four lived. All four boys went in very different directions.
“Today it’s an international dynasty of 19 grandchildren – 16 of whom are alive -and about 45 great-grandchildren who live on four continents, Asia, Europe, the US and Africa.
“They are actually an incredibly private family and very philanthropic and successful but you only hear about the ones who end tragically.”
Among them are Mark Getty, 63, who co-founded Getty Images, Anne G. Earhart, 72, an environmentalist, and fashion designer August Williams, 29, who makes dresses worn by everyone from Cher to Katy Perry.
August’s sibling Nats — a fellow LGBTQ rights activist who announced his gender transition after marrying transgender celebrity Gigi Gorgeous — has a line of exclusive streetwear.
Getty cousins included Balthazar Getty, 49, an actor, director and DJ, and Isabel a multi-hyphenate actor-director-DJ-designer, and Isabel Getty, 30, a singer/songwriter and Internet influencer.
Ivy’s friends hope she follows in the footsteps of her high-achieving relatives, not the doomed ones.
She is currently with Ford Models.
“I hope her modeling career is successful,” the family insider said. “I think she’d gain a lot of esteem from that accomplishment being her own and not something she bought.
“Being saddled with that kind of inheritance can make it hard for you to find your place in life and hard to really know who your friends are.
“But I think she’s on her way to carving out her own identity in the world. It may seem weird to have such a huge wedding and then to pull the plug — but the rich are different than you and me.”
