C. Z. Guest

C. Z. Guest, one of the monarchs of New York society who was a perennial selection on the best-dressed list, a noted horsewoman and an authority on gardening, died in November 2003 at home in Old Westbury, N.Y. She was 83. When she was married in 1947 to Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, an international polo star, heir to the Phipps steel fortune and a second cousin of Winston Churchill, the ceremony was held at the home of Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, with Hemingway serving as best man. Until Mr. Guest's death in 1982, the couple was prominent in international social circles, hunting in India with the Maharaja of Jaipur and frequently entertaining the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who subsequently became godparents of their children, Cornelia and Alexander. Lucy Douglas Cochrane was born in Boston on Feb. 19, 1920, the second of five children of Alexander Lynde Cochrane, an investment banker, and Vivian Cochrane, the former Vivian Wessell. Her father died when she was 6. She was educated by tutors and later graduated from the Fermata School in Aiken, S.C. She made her society debut in 1937, and was voted the glamour girl of the Massachusetts North Shore in a contest held in 1939, which prompted a brief career as a showgirl. She appeared in a 1943 revue on the roof of the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and in a revival of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway in 1944. She spent six months in Hollywood attending 20th Century Fox's studio school but never appeared in a film. The Guests jointly owned racing stables, with Mr. Guest supervising those in Chantilly, France, and Mrs. Guest supervising others in Middleburg, Va. She loved exercising her horses and did so most mornings. For years she competed in the leading horse shows. In addition to her son Alexander, of Hunterdon County, N.J., and her daughter, Cornelia, of Old Westbury, she is survived by two stepsons, Winston Guest, of Palm Beach, and Frederick, of New York, and three grandchildren.