Elaine wynn biography

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I always viewed our work as partners.”

The Wynns were behind some of the most fantastical hotels and attractions on the Las Vegas Strip, including the Mirage and its volcano, Treasure Island’s pirate battle, the Bellagio with its fountains and the Wynn’s air-bending design.

Beyond the glamour of casinos with her husband, Wynn’s passion was in developing Las Vegas into a city worth living in—not just making money in.

“My role, first as a young mother, was getting involved in building Las Vegas as a city and all that that meant,” she said in an interview last year.

Once you have a nucleus of families that have decided that they want to make it a permanent location for their future, they want to build out the community,” she said. The pair divorced a second time in 2010.

She was later ousted from her office and the Wynn Resorts board.

After the Journal revealed allegations of Steve Wynn’s sexual harassment by multiple Wynn employees and coverup payments that were kept secret from the board, he sold his share of the company and returned voting rights to Elaine that she had signed away in their divorce.

She was once the largest individual shareholder in Wynn Resorts and a prolific philanthropist in education and the arts.

She also spent her final years burnishing her reputation as both a world-class collector and champion of public art.

Born and raised in New York City, Elaine Pascal graduated from George Washington University in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Her casino career began after a blind date with Steve Wynn.

She helped the company expand with the opening of Wynn Macau in 2006, and Forbes dubbed her the "Queen of Las Vegas" in 2015. "I had a prominent role to play in our businesses, but he was the risk taker and the visionary."

She and Steve have two daughters, Kevyn and Gillian, and seven grandchildren.

The family faced a particularly scary moment in 1993 when Kevyn, then 26, was kidnapped.

Together they ran his father’s East Coast bingo parlors. “She helped to create and grow the company to become the most esteemed luxury resort brand in the world,” Wynn Resorts said. The founder of Wynn Resorts and finance chair of the Republican National Committee is denying allegations of sexual misconduct raised by multiple people in a new Wall Street Journal report, telling the newspaper, "The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous."

Wynn went on to say, in part, "The instigation of these accusations is the continued work of my ex-wife Elaine Wynn, with whom I am involved in a terrible and nasty lawsuit in which she is seeking a revised divorce settlement."

Here's what you need to know about Elaine Wynn, the woman who divorced Steve Wynn twice.

She co-founded Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts with Steve.

Elaine and her then-husband co-founded and led Mirage Resorts from 1976 to 2000 before co-founding Wynn Resorts in 2000.

She was on several boards, including Nevada’s state education board and Communities in Schools, a school dropout prevention nonprofit.

Her granddaughter, Marlowe Early, has said her “Mouchie”—Elaine’s family nickname—hasn’t been rightly recognized for what she achieved amid years of personal and professional turmoil.

“She is the person who has conducted herself with grace, value, consistency,” Early said in 2022.

They divorced in 1986, remarried five years later, and divorced for a second time in 2010.