Anna Nicoles other life

Category people, Magazine | Permalink | 25. February 2007

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When they first met, the then Vickie Lynn Hogan and Sandi Powledge were just friends. But over time that friendship turned into a tumultuous love affair.
Long ago, before blond bombshell Anna Nicole Smith left Houston to find international fortune and fame, she fell in love with a girlfriend who would become her closest companion for three years.Before stardom ever cast a spotlight on the fallen actress and model, before Smith vaulted into the upper stratosphere of wealth by marrying an 89-year-old Houston oil tycoon, before allegations of drug abuse and gold digging ran rampant, it was just Sandi and Vickie.

Vickie Lynn Hogan, which was Smith’s real name, was just a stripper in those days. But she aspired to be a model, and she was poised on the cusp of stardom, soon to win recognition on the pages of Playboy and several high-profile advertising gigs that would plaster her buxom image on billboards and pin-ups across the country.

Sandi Powledge was the furthest thing from glamour — unpretentious, grounded, fun-loving and real.

They met in a gay bar in northwest Harris County in 1991 and would become lovers. It was an exhilarating time, one that Powledge, now 46, remembers fondly, even as she mourns the death of the woman she once loved.

Powledge’s recollections evoke a picture of a woman far more vulnerable and human than Smith ever let on during her moments in the public eye.

“I don’t know if she ever believed anyone really loved her,” Powledge said sadly, recalling her tumultuous relationship with the famous model and TV star during a recent interview in the small northeast Texas town of Winnsboro. “She was just hungry for love, hungry for approval — just like a bucket with a hole in the bottom.”

Although the women had not spoken in 12 years by the time Smith, 39, died of undetermined causes in a Florida hotel room on Feb. 8, Powledge is grieving as if their last contact had occurred yesterday.

See more
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4574542.html

By PEGGY O’HARE
Houston Chronicle

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