Christine Schwarzman is from Long Island and an intellectual property lawyer once married to a Hearst heir. She and Stephen Schwarzman have been married since 1995. Born in 1953, Christine B. Lalonde grew up in Hicksville, Long Island, just an hour outside New York City. According to The New York Times, her father, a New York City Fire Department lieutenant, had founded Electritek Industries, a local distributor of appliance parts. After high school, Lalonde stayed in Long Island to attend Hofstra University, and later earned her law degree from New York University. went on to become the vice-president of sales and marketing for Reeves Teletape, a division of the Reeves Communication Corporation. She also served as director for the Video Tape Producers Association. During this period, she met Austin Chilton Hearst, grandson of media magnate William Randolph Hearst. The two became engaged and got married on July 1, 1984. They had a daughter, but eventually divorced. By 1993, Lalonde had moved on from her role at Reeves and was working as a senior associate specialising in intellectual property law at the prestigious New York City law firm Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman. It was also in 1993 that she was introduced to Stephen Schwarzman, who was recently separated from his then wife, with whom he shares two children.