Winthrop Chanler Rutherfurd was an American socialite from New York, best known for his romance with Consuelo Vanderbilt and his marriage to Lucy Mercer, mistress to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan was a socialite and a member of the American Vanderbilt family. Her first marriage to the 9th Duke of Marlborough has become a well-known example of the advantageous, but loveless, marriages common during the Gilded Age. The Duke obtained a large dowry by the marriage, and reportedly told her just after the marriage that he married her in order to "save Blenheim Palace", his ancestral home.