Society columns chronicled them arm in arm among the glitterati on the charity ball circuit for more than a decade, but the last chapter
in the romance of then-TV reporter Mary-Ellen Conway and the late businessman and philanthropist Henry J.N. Taub could be written by a probate court jury. A few minutes before midnight on the fourth anniversary of Taub’s 2004 death at age 85, Conway, now a lawyer at Fulbright & Jaworski, filed claim to her long-time companion’s estate. Acting as her own attorney, she filed papers saying she was Taub’s common law wife and that he had written a missing will codicil that granted her a $150,000 annual allowance, medical and nursing home care, a working horse farm in Brookshire and a brass sculpture of Taub, among other things. Henry Taub served on many boards including at Baylor College of Medicine, and inherited much of his uncle’s wealth. At stake in the Conway-Taub probate fight is no doubt far more than the $18 million listed in the estate inventory. Some estimate the true value of the private holdings could exceed $50 million. The former medical reporter for KTRK Channel 13 was denied her request to scour Taub’s former River Oaks home for the codicil. It was never found and is no longer a legal issue. But a determination of whether Conway was actually Taub’s bride is set for a jury trial in October, unless Harris County Probate Judge Kathy Stone tosses the matter out of court before then as the Taub children have asked. “She was married to Mr. Taub for 15 years. She was his confidante. She helped him in his business and personal affairs,” said Conway’s current lawyer Mike Pierce. Pierce said Conway waited four years, hoping the children would make good on their father’s promise to take care of her. Conway, 62, claims the three essential elements of a common law marriage: They lived together, they held themselves out to others as a married couple, and they intended to be married. She said they met in 1985 at a Baylor lunch event, introduced by mutual friend and world-renowned heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, and decided to be married in 1989. She says he even gave her a ring. Conway’s lawsuit includes a legal claim to Taub’s $1.5 million River Oaks home where his son Kitch now lives. Conway says she and Taub lived together in both that house and her home in west Houston, spending weekends on his horse ranch near Hobby Airport where they shared a love for riding and breeding horses.
“It was where my body was and where my heart was,” Conway said of the River Oaks home in a deposition. “Also my clothes, my toiletries, my curlers and more important, my sweetheart.”