Mind the gap! Art mogul Jay to wed woman half his age
Seven years after splitting from his wife, film maker Sam TaylorWood, multi-millionaire art mogul Jay Jopling is to remarry. Sharp- suited Jay, 51, who is responsible for turning artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey emin i nto household names, recently proposed to Hikari Yokoyama, a beautiful American art curator some 20 years his junior.
He follows the example set by his ex, director of the Fifty Shades Of Grey movie, who confounded cynics in 2012 by marrying her toyboy lover, Aaron Johnson.
Taylor-Wood, 48, is 23 years actor Aaron’s senior.
‘We are aiming for a wedding next year,’ Hikari tells me excitedly. ‘I don’t think we will have the wedding in england, just because you can’t guarantee sunshine and I don’t want to risk my beautiful bridal dress being rained on.’
Yokoyama was speaking at a Paddle8 auction for the charity
Women international at the Pace Gallery in london, where she was sporting a suitably i mpressive engagement ring, though she insists she is yet to decide on a designer for her wedding dress.
old etonian Jay — his father michael served as a minister under margaret Thatcher — became one the capital’s foremost movers and shakers when he set up the ultra fashionable White Cube gallery in 1993, turning it into the epicentre of london’s booming contemporary art scene.
He and Taylor-Wood, with whom he has two daughters, became one of the most celebrated and glamorous couples on t he london party circuit, before splitting in 2008 after 11 years of marriage.
While Sam went on to find love and have two further daughters with Hollywood star Johnson, whom she met when he played a young John lennon in her 2009 directorial debut Nowhere Boy about the late former Beatle, Jay was subsequently spotted canoodling with mouthy pop star lily Allen, before hooking up with Hikari in 2012.