Nancy Shevell and Paul McCartney (Getty Images)

Nancy "Trucker Girl" Shevell has stepped down from her position as a board member for the M.T.A., reports AMNY.

During a Wednesday morning meeting, Ms. Shevell gave her parting remarks: "In my 30-year professional career, this has been the highlight for me... Thank you so much. I am so very emotional and sad right now."

Ms. Shevell will now be splitting time between New York and London, home of her Beatles husband Paul McCartney lives.

Born into the New England Motor Freight haulage dynasty, Ms. Shevell began serving the city in 2001. Her term on the M.T.A. board actually expired last year, but she had remained the head of the bus committee.

“She plays for the company team,” said Gene Russianoff , longtime spokesperson for the Straphanger’s Campaign during an interview last year with the Observer. “During her tenure as bus committee chairman, they eliminated 570 bus stops, which led to worse service. She didn’t publicly fight the budget cuts. She’s not a thorn in the side of the M.T.A.”

Nancy Shevell and Paul McCartney. Photo via Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

On a recent morning in the fifth-floor conference room of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s brick and limestone Madison Avenue headquarters, a public meeting of the board was called to order. The various members representing the audit, governance, bridges and tunnels, finance, and other committees listened patiently as Mark Shotkin, a member of the transit-riding public, made a statement. “Jim and Andrew, your ties are very nice,” he began, spreading a little sugar around the room. “Nancy, your-your-your jacket is very nice,” he added, grinning at Nancy Shevell, the bus committee chairman. Then he got right to the point: “Good morning, everybody, um, garbage and graffiti on platforms and trains—totally disgusting.”

Ms. Shevell, who is tall with raven hair that swings glossily from side to side, wore a striped gray and white sweater, black jeans and sandals, along with an indulgent smile. Having served on the M.T.A. for 10 years—spanning four governors—the trucking executive was plainly at home in the boardroom. There was little indication that she is living something of a Cinderella-at-the-ball moment these days. The New Jersey-born daughter of a trucking company owner, she is now betrothed one of the world’s top recording artists, Sir Paul McCartney. Except for the 1925 Cartier solitaire diamond engagement ring (said to have set the Beatle back some $650,000) sparkling on her left hand under the stark fluorescent lighting, however, the future Lady McCartney still seemed like a Jersey girl—an exceedingly self-possessed, relaxed, collegial and well-manicured Jersey girl, but still.

You don’t meet a prince without a fairy godmother, and Ms. Shevell’s romantic coup—he may not be John Lennon, ladies, but he’s not Ringo, either—is said to have been engineered by no less formidable a yenta than The View’s Barbara Walters, who happens to be her second cousin. “Barbara was her emotional confidante and played matchmaker,” a friend of the couple told The Observer. “She gave numerous dinner parties for them and always made sure to invite people she knew that Paul would want to meet.” The friend added that the broadcast vet also coached Ms. Shevell on how to behave around the musician, helping her to beat out a number of other aspirants for Mr. McCartney’s eye, including Rosanna Arquette. Ms. Walters’s strategy was clear: Look at Heather Mills, and do precisely the opposite. “They took a page from the old regime and made sure not to make the same mistakes.” Among other shrewd moves, Ms. Shevell has made a point of wearing Stella’s designs to various parties, ensuring maximum press coverage (Ms. Mills had done the same thing, but Ms. Shevell is said to have done it with more sincerity and panache). She has also pulled back when the media attention heated up. The couple shunned the press at the recent Costume Institute Gala, and at a New York City Ballet party (Sir Paul has collaborated with Peter Martins to write the musical score for a ballet debuting this fall), she tried to steer clear of photographers, one told The Observer. “She told me that she didn’t like to have her picture taken with people she didn’t know,” he said. “And she mentioned that she wasn’t used to the attention.”

Ms. Walters was asked about her role as matchmaker. “We are very close,” she told The Observer, somewhat coyly. “Nancy is like a second child to me. Her two aunts died of cancer. She’s struggled in her life.”

More than that she wasn’t saying. “The thing about Nancy is that she doesn’t want this article,” Ms. Walters explained in her legendary lisp. “She doesn’t want anything to do with publicity. She’s turned down a piece in Vogue.  She doesn’t want anything to do with music.”

No wonder Mr. McCartney likes her.

Nancy Shevell grew up in a Jewish family in Edison, N.J., the middle daughter of Myron and Arlene Shevell. Myron is the owner New England Motor Freight (NEMF), a large haulage company that does more than $400 million in annual revenues. Like Paul’s first wife, Linda McCartney, Arlene fought breast cancer (she died in 1991); Nancy is a survivor of the disease.

The Shevells have been in the trucking industry since the 1920s, when the family business transported seafood from the New Jersey coast to New York (shades of Boardwalk Empire). During the 1960s, Myron started his own business with his brother, Daniel, but they ran afoul of government investigators, and in 1975 were charged with fraud for alleged involvement with the Mafia. The case never went to trial, but the brothers were forced to surrender control of company and went bankrupt. Later that year Daniel Shevell, aged 39, fatally shot himself. In 1988, after buying the struggling trucking company NEMF, Myron Shevell was accused of colluding with Vincent Gigante, the head of the Genovese crime family. It was claimed in a racketeering lawsuit that Mr. Shevell made illegal pay-offs in return for a deal that would allow his company to skirt union rules. Again the case never went to trial, but Mr. Shevell was barred for five years from engaging in union negotiations.

Despite these difficulties, Nancy gravitated toward the family business. According to the one and only interview she’s ever given, a 2002 sit down with the The Newark Star-Ledger, she loved it when her father brought her toy trucks as gifts. “I used to line them up in my room, right next to my Barbies,” she said, adding, “While other kids would go feed ducks at the park, we would go to my father’s truck terminals, to places like Pennsauken, every single weekend.”

A tomboy streak appears to have persisted into high school, where Nancy played for her school’s all-girl football team. Her interests, as listed in her 1977 yearbook, were skiing, flying, Vermont and, curiously, “boobs.” She went onto Arizona State University, where she majored in transportation—the only woman to do so at the time—and met her ex-husband, attorney Bruce Blakeman, with whom she has a son, Arlen, 19.

Mr. Blakeman couldn’t offer a sharper contrast from her current beau. A die-hard Republican who challenged Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010, Mr. Blakeman is probably best-known for an eccentric political ad which featured a “pitch” from his talking pet dog during a short-lived campaign for mayor in 2009. When contacted about Ms. Shevell’s wedding plans, he was gracious. “I wish Nancy and Paul well, and that’s it. Nancy’s a great mother, and Paul treats my son very nicely.”

Ms. Shevell joined her father’s company in 1983, becoming VP for administration in 1986. As a woman in an overwhelmingly male industry, she was put through her paces. In The Star-Ledger, she recalled one dramatic throwdown with a colleague, adding pointedly, “I don’t know where he is right now but I know where I am.”

Ms. Shevell was appointed to serve on the M.T.A. board in 2001 by then-governor George Pataki, an unpaid post. Though her 10-year tenure came to an end in June, so far no seems to be in any rush to replace her.

According to other board members, Ms. Shevell is well-liked by her colleagues, despite having missed a number of the monthly meetings and openly texting in others. She breezes through her agenda items with a certain practiced efficiency and a firm grasp of Robert’s Rules of Order. Eschewing a driver, Ms. Shevell generally takes the bus to M.T.A. meetings, traveling down Fifth Avenue from her apartment on East 83rd Street. Noted one former board member, “She would talk a lot about bus bunching on Fifth and the fact that the subways are so crowded during rush hour.”

Which isn’t to say she’s been a champion of commuters during her years on the board. “She plays for the company team,” said Gene Russianoff, longtime spokesperson for the Straphanger’s Campaign. “During her tenure as bus committee chairman, they eliminated 570 bus stops, which led to worse service. She didn’t publicly fight the budget cuts. She’s not a thorn in the side of the M.T.A.”

 The origin’s of the couple’s romance are murky, despite the efforts of some of Fleet Street’s finest news hounds. (Indeed, Sir Paul, dubbed Macca by the British papers, recently suggested he may have been voice-mail hacked.)

Reportedly, their acquaintance goes back some 20 years, due to the  proximity of their weekend homes in the Hamptons. (Ms. Shevell’s East Hampton residence, valued at $8 million, is said to be far nicer than Mr. McCartney’s Amagansett getaway.) 

Their romance first became public in 2007, when The Sun reported that they’d been spotted at a South Fork sushi spot. Afterward, the story noted, “Macca put his arm around Nancy after he drove her home—and they kissed tenderly.” Ms. Shevell was legally separated at the time, and Mr. McCartney was busy disentangling himself from his troubled romance with Ms. Mills.

The tabloids also breathlessly reported on a road trip they took in the summer of 2008 on Route 66 crossing seven states in an ’89 Ford Bronco, and another jaunt to Anguilla after the deaths of Nancy’s older brother, Jon, from a drug overdose, and Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ road manager.

The couple’s engagement was announced on May 6 of this year. The wedding will be in London—a low-key affair (as these things go) with just a few friends and family members present.

And after that? Ms. Shevell has been quoted by The New York Post as saying that she’d love to live here in New York but that they would most likely wind up in England. That’s where the story may diverge from the usual fairy tale. Despite Sir Paul’s fortune of well over a billion dollars, he is famously stingy. (A source close to the couple noted with an eye-roll that during the couple’s courtship, Nancy always bought her own plane tickets to the U.K.) His estate in Peasmarsh, Sussex, might be set on 1,500 acres for privacy reasons, but it’s no palace by any stretch. Moreover, it’s isolated. Ms. Shevell can anticipate a lot of nights watching the telly.

And when she does go out, sources say, she will have her work cut out for her. “Confident, independent women who come over here with money will not have many friends,” warned Helen Kirwan-Taylor, an American journalist whose husband runs a hedge fund in London. “The last thing you can be here is threatening to other women. The things that open doors in New York shut them in England.”

After the M.T.A. meeting, Ms. Shevell told The Observer that she didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “It’s just not that intriguing,” she said. “Not like his last marriage, which was really intriguing. I’m over 50. I work. That’s it. I haven’t been social and I have a small group of girlfriends. There really isn’t much to talk about.”

She smiled, pushing through the door out to Madison Avenue—presumably late for a bus.

dprince@observer.com

Mr. McCartney, wearing a lightweight European aristo scarf indoors, was accompanied by his lady friend, M.T.A. board member Nancy Shevell, who has been publicly scolded lately for skipping budget meetings while cavorting across the pond in England with her new beau.

“Together now!” a scrum of photographers yelped at the pair. Ms. Shevell gave Mr. McCartney a pouty look, but then scurried up next to him anyway, posing for photos in her violet minidress and curious, sparkle-covered nude leggings, which seemed to recall the singer Britney Spears’ outfit at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.

“We recycle, I drive a hybrid, and we’re vegetarian, which the United Nations recently said is the single most effective thing an individual can do because of cattle-rearing and its effects on the environment,” opined Mr. McCartney. “I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years,” he added, “and I’m now only 37!” (He’s actually 66.)

Around the room, other guests were discussing their own minor contributions to the environmental movement, too. “Our daughter has us using recycled toilet paper!” the Daily Transom overheard one man exclaim to his dinner companion.

A number of powerful moguls attended, including financier Ron Perelman, former Viacom president Tom Freston, IAC chairman Barry Diller and IMG honcho Ted Forstmann—the latter two, accompanied by Diane von Furstenberg and Padma Lakshmi, respectively. Also present were several SNL cast members invited by their boss, Lorne Michaels, who bought a table that evening. (30 Rock star Alec Baldwin served as emcee for the event.)

“We fell asleep, rolled out of bed and rolled into here,” said comedian Fred Armisen, with Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss on his arm.

“We’re going to L.A. soon and we’re going to get our little hybrid cars—that’s our big move,” Ms. Moss told the Daily Transom. “But,” she added, turning to Mr. Armisen, “we’re pretty good, right?”

“Yeah,” he chimed in, “and we’re pretty recycle-y.”

Do they wish they were greener? “I always buy new clothes and then I throw them away, so I’d like to start reusing them,” joked Mr. Armisen. “I never do the laundry. Really expensive suits—right in the garbage!”

Nearby, fellow SNL standout Seth Meyers was making his way inside. “My boss invited me,” he told the Daily Transom. Invited or told? “No, he asks me. He’s powerful enough to know that asking will do the trick.”

Mr. Meyers said his carbon footprint has been relatively small. “I don’t have a driver’s license right now so I can’t burn any gas, and anytime I turn on my air conditioner, it blows the fuse,” he noted. “My prewar apartment building has very strong feelings about being green.”

What else can he do to help? “I am only going to have sex with the light off!” Mr. Meyers pledged.

Ms. McCartney, the evening’s honoree, teetered in right before the dinner began in a royal blue, sheer-topped dress. The Transom wondered what, if anything, is most frustrating for the eco-conscious designer.

“The meat industry!” she replied. “It’s responsible for all the carbon emissions during its worldwide transport.”

Ms. McCartney’s father suddenly dashed toward her holding up his cellular phone like a tape recorder to mock the reporters lining up to speak with her.

“But, what do you think about the environment?” demanded Mr. McCartney in a silly Irish accent.

“No more questions, no more questions!” she shrieked at him to play along. After which, father and daughter posed together for photos and retreated inside.

As it happens, Mr. McCartney’s new lover, Nancy Shevell, is Ms. Walters’ kin. Cousins, in fact. During the said episode, the venerable newswoman’s also said that when she interviewed Mr. McCartney’s now-ex-wife, she was “extremely difficult.”

In a statement to the Huffington Post, Ms. Walters’ publicist, Cindi Berger, explains:

“Barbara was unaware that Nancy was involved with Paul McCartney. We just found out about that when the press alerted us. Barbara and Nancy are second cousins. Barbara is not her aunt.”

Barbara’s Kissing Cousin: Walters And Paul McCartney’s Girlfriend Are Family [HuffPo]

Again this week in the romance department, rumors and announcements surrounding novel couplings have proven their power to flabbergast outsiders. Last time we checked in with Mr. Wanis, he offered a bleak outlook on the prospect of Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen finding true love together. But this week, after hearing confirmation of singer Rihanna and actor Josh Hartnett’s relationship, Mr. Wanis was hopeful.

He said that he could sense that the 19-year-old R&B artist really likes her new flame for a couple of reasons. Aside from the respect Mr. Hartnett, 29, likely shows her, he maintains a desirable balance of qualities. “If you look at his face, he’s got a strong facial structure, which says, ‘I’m a leader; I’m tough; I’m strong.’ But he also has a certain sensitivity in his eyes. And she’ll be attracted to that. She likes him because he’s sexy, he’s hot, and also because he’s very sweet and he treats her well. I think that’s a better mix for now than some of the other ones.”

Moreover, Mr. Wanis said that the pair’s respective astrological signs will work well for them both in the bedroom and on the street. Mr. Hartnett is a Cancer on the very edge of Leo, which means, in his opinion, that he’s very emotional and paternalistic. Rihanna, on the other hand, is a Pisces, meaning that she’s happy, confident, optimistic and outgoing—if easily influenced and prone to telling a lot of white lies. “Even though he’s very sexual, their lovemaking is going to be more about love than it is about primal sex or lust. I also think they look good together,” he explained.

Sadly, Mr. Wanis was not so optimistic about Matthew Perry and Mandy Moore, who were recently spotted canoodling in public. “I feel like laughing again, because, with all due respect, Matthew Perry is pretty much two-dimensional, whereas Mandy Moore actually has some depth,” he said. Ms. Moore, 23, appears to be totally healthy, sweet and grounded, but Mr. Wanis worries that Mr. Perry, 38, might still be struggling the substance abuse problems, which have twice sent him to the hospital. “She points, in fact, to one of the reasons she’s a grounded celeb—that she doesn’t go stupid like Britney and Paris and all the others—is because of her family background,” he continued, “I’d personally be saying, ‘Mandy, stay away from him,’” Mr. Wanis admitted, predicting that the pair were headed nowhere, fast.

And while we're on the topic of speedy relationships, the tabloids, celebrity blogs and gossip weeklies have been alight this week with chatter of Paul McCartney’s steamy affair with Nancy Shevell, wife of power-attorney Bruce Blakeman. The two spent last weekend together in the Hamptons—where Mr. McCartney, 65, stopped by a luxe lingerie boutique before dropping in at the Long Island manse inhabited by Ms. Shevell, 47, who is the vice president at one of her husband’s companies.

“He’s making a big mistake,” Mr. Wanis told us. While Ms. Shevell may be legally separated from her husband, that doesn’t really matter. Our celebrity life coach always tells people to not get involved with someone who is in a relationship of any kind, because “separation does not mean that it’s over. It means, I’m confused; I don’t know what to do; I need some time apart so I can make up my mind.” Later, he questioned the new couple’s ethics. “Obviously it’s more than just, ‘Oh, I thought I’d say, ‘Hi, how are you? I haven’t seen you in a couple of months!’ It’s not just, ‘We’re old pals or buddies,’” Mr. Wanis continued, “In terms of morals it’s wrong anyway, because it’s obviously going further than just friends.

“McCartney has a lot of power, sometimes too much power, and it doesn’t mean he’s always using it in the right way,” he added.

Mr. Wanis also sympathizes with Mr. McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, who has “been given hell in the U.K. tabloids.” In his opinion, Mr. McCartney’s new affair has only served to further insult Ms. Mills. “It’s really sad because this is a woman who put a lot of her heart, passion and energy into helping people,” he said. Asked about recent reports that the former Beatle’s daughter, the fashion designer Stella McCartney, has designed a necklace with a leg pendant (Ms. Mills is an amputee), Mr. Wanis had only one thing to say: “How tacky!”

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, George Clooney’s physical feud with housewife dreamboat Fabio humors and disappoints Mr. Wanis, but it hardly surprises him. “George Clooney has always had a bad temper!” he said of the actor, who he thinks has always been in love with his own press. “What’s funny is that Fabio and Clooney are both divas anyway,” he mused, which can make them crave attention of any kind.

“The old adage is: There’s no bad publicity—as long as people are talking about you, that’s good. That’s been the belief for a long, long time. The problem is that today, we’ve become more fascinated with the lifestyle of the celebrities versus their talent,” Mr. Wanis told us. In the end, he thinks celebrities like Mr. Clooney and Mr. Fabio need to stop “all these stupid games” and start using their talent in better ways. “Clooney’s giving the paparazzi what they want when he’s having these stupid spats,” he added of the star, who has famously gone head to head with aggressive shutterbugs.

Another well-known foe of the paparazzi, actor Heath Ledger, and his onetime lover, Michelle Williams, have reportedly made plans to design identical bedrooms in their homes for their young daughter, Matilda Rose. Apparently, the onetime couple thinks creating mirrored environments for her will make her feel less confused and hurt by her parents’ split.

“That’s stupid and I’ll tell you why that’s stupid. The security and the reassurance that their daughter has wont come from the physical surroundings, it’ll come from the interaction, the dynamics from her parents,” Mr. Wanis said. “What can be more disconcerting than to wake up in the same room and you look up and go, Where’s mum? Oh, this is dad’s place! Then you wake up in an identical room, Where’s dad? Oh, mum’s here! It’s a stupid philosophy,” he said with a laugh. “If they want to give the child a security blanket, don’t put the same colored blanket around them.”

Instead of more-or-less trying to trick Matilda into a sense of wellbeing, Mr. Wanis thinks they’d be better off showing each other respect in front of the child and perhaps finding an item like a doll or teddy bear that she can take with her to her parents’ respective dwellings.

“Again, that’s how celebrities get lost,” he told the Daily Transom. “They have so much money that they’re not thinking about how to use it. It’s not even creative, it’s stupid.”