Pictured: Dress, Gucci. Necklace, Gus+Al, shopBAZAAR.com. Hair: Peter Butler for Wella Professionals; makeup: Alexa Rodulfo for Diorskin; manicure: Gina Viviano for Chanel Le Vernis. FASHION EDITOR: Ann Caruso.
In 1995, Justine Wheeler, an art school graduate from Johannesburg, South Africa, traveled to New York City for a vacation. She went to meet a friend at Bar 89 in SoHo, the sort of '90s place where the bathrooms misted up and everybody watched. It was there that she met Jeff Koons. "I just never went home," she says.
Twenty years later, Justine, 43, is telling this story over lunch at Café Luxembourg, across town from where she and Jeff live on the Upper East Side with their six children, Sean, Blake, Kurt, Scarlet, Eric, and Micky, ranging in age from 14 to three. Even with all the money in the world (Koons is among the world's top-selling artists), six kids are a proposition. "I have a very cool exterior, and inside lots of things happen," Justine says, laughing. "I'm very good at lists, well, mostly." She adds, "Five of our kids are in school, and their days are long—from 7:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. The only one who's at home is Micky, and Micky is quite independent." The family divides their time between the city and a farm in Pennsylvania. Not as bucolic as it sounds, however. "Weasels ate all our chickens," Justine says, sighing.
But back to that fateful day in 1995. "I was drinking whiskey on the rocks," she recalls. "I think Jeff had a beard." So began a whirlwind romance, which also required immediate pragmatism. In order to stay in the U.S., she took a job in Jeff's studio to get a work visa. "I didn't have any intention of leaving South Africa," she says. "It just happened spontaneously and serendipitously."
The young artist was also feeling the frustration of the limitations in South Africa, only a year post-apartheid. "The cultural boycotts had just been lifted, so there was the first Johannesburg Biennale, but besides that, there was no real culture coming into South Africa at all."
At 23, Justine's New York art immersion was instant. In Jeff's studio, she worked on sculptures. "The tulips and the balloon flower and the Play-Doh." Her favorite was the huge Cat on a Clothesline, which one day fell on her head. "It was all part of the fun of that really strange time in Jeff's life," she says. "He was going bankrupt because of his divorce [from porn actress Ilona "Cicciolina" Staller, which was complicated by a nearly 20-year custody battle over her alleged abduction of son Ludwig, who is now 23 and sees Jeff regularly]. It was a wild time."
In a strange symmetry, Justine had written her final thesis on Jeff's work. In the early '90s, backpacking in Amsterdam, she saw his show at the Stedelijk Museum. "Certain books were still banned in South Africa at the time, so I brought all his books home. It was the first slice we had of Jeff's work."
These days Justine works on two polar-opposite projects. With Jeff, she founded the Koons Family Institute on International Law & Policy, which works to combat child abduction and sexual exploitation. On a more creative bent, she is launching a jewelry line, Gus+Al, with business partner Alison Brokaw. The line fuses social media memes with a "personal narrative"—smiley face rings, for example, are based on images from old Life magazines. "The iconic original '70s smiley face, not the emoji smiley face," while necklaces and earrings feature hashtag slogans like #LOL, #YESDEAR and #YES. "#YES is inspired by the Yoko Ono piece, when she and John Lennon met," Justine explains of the couple's fateful meeting at a London exhibition of Ono's work in 1969. "We just wanted the message to be really positive, where anything was possible."
When Justine invests—in love, family, or art—she invests deeply. "I have so few people in my life I really feel comfortable with and trust, so when I do I'm fully committed," she says. "When I met Jeff it was interesting, because he was going through the whole process with Ludwig. Being with him through all that … he went through a really rough time. When we decided to be together, to make it official and commit to a relationship, that changed it for the better."
She has also recommitted to her own art. Following the birth of her youngest son, she suffered from postpartum depression. "For the first time ever. I just knew I had to save myself somehow, and the only way I could think of was going back to the studio and painting so there was something of me left in the picture. Painting is quite a healing process."
She describes her work: "Big paintings that take forever! I take a ton of photos when we travel, and I composite it into a collage. It has a narrative and a story for me—a lot about looking and being looked at and ways of masking yourself."
Will she ever show them? "I don't think I can," she says. "Jeff has a very big shadow. He casts a really big shadow. That's why I wanted to do the jewelry. It's creative but completely different from Jeff's work." Pause. "Although he did let us use the rabbit, which was very nice of him."
It's a testament to Justine's modesty that she questions her own daring, and her presence in this portfolio. "Am I?" she asks more than once. "Women in general are very daring, because even now there is still extraordinary discrimination and violations of women's basic human rights. Women like Malala Yousafzai, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Roberta Kaplan are leading the charge."
She continues, "Daring is working hard to achieve your goals while remaining accountable to your community and without losing sight of yourself. All the women in this portfolio are groundbreakers! Patti Smith is an icon, a powerhouse. She is literally the reason Jeff moved to New York in the '70s—her voice and message changed his life."
As did his wife, who left her life behind in South Africa for the crazy embrace of New York. When was the last time Justine pulled a rabbit out of her hat? She smiles serenely. "I do it every night."
This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Harper's BAZAAR. See more of BAZAAR's Women Who Dare portfolio here.
