It wasn’t his mistress that tech titan Charles Phillips was keeping secret — it was his wife!
YaVaughnie Wilkins — the Oracle president’s gal pal who plastered billboard ads across the country to declare their love — lived with him for years before discovering he still had a relationship with his wife, relatives said yesterday.
When Phillips, 50, starting dating Wilkins in 2001, he said he was separated from his wife, Karen. Two years later, he told her their divorce had been finalized, and Wilkins, now 41, and Phillips moved to California together.
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“They lived together for the majority of their relationship. She thought she was in a long-term, monogamous relationship,” said Wilkins’ cousin Misha Davila. “It never occurred to any of us that he was still married.”
He even introduced Wilkins as his girlfriend to his son, Chas, and the three went to sporting events together.
Making $20 million a year, he whisked her around the world and in 2008 moved with her into an $11 million mansion he bought near San Francisco.
Two years earlier, Phillips — who also serves as an economic adviser to the Obama administration — bought a $6 million spread nearby with wife Karen, listing them on the property records as “husband and wife.”
“The typical red flags weren’t there,” Davila said. “The only time he wasn’t with her was when he was traveling on business. I have no idea now whether he really was on business trips. It’s all very upsetting. He was a real part of the family.”
When family members saw a 2006 magazine profile on Phillips that mentioned he was married, the tech honcho “said it was a mistake,” said Davila. “He said they must have used an old resume.”
On her website, Wilkins included a series of apologetic, groveling notes from Phillips to her, promising they’d spend their lives together and pleading with her to “stick with me” and “hang in there” and noting “we’re almost over the hump.”
Davila said they were written at a time when Wilkins was pressuring Phillips to make good on an agreement to move back to New York together.
“California was supposed to be a temporary thing — three years or so,” Davila said. “YaVaughnie wanted to go back to New York and was getting impatient, that’s what those notes were about.”
Davila also said that Phillips talked openly about marrying Wilkins. “Charles always said how much he loved her. He told me, “‘I want to marry her.’ I always thought YaVaughnie was the hold-up, that she didn’t want to get married.”
But he had never divorced Karen. She filed for divorce in 2008, records show, but a source said Phillips is now back with his wife.
Phillips has acknowledged a long-running relationship with Wilkins but didn’t respond to further questions yesterday.
It was only after Wilkins received an anonymous e-mail in July 2009 telling her Phillips was having an affair with a woman — his wife — that she suspected anything was amiss.
She knew she had to pull the plug. “There was no trust left,” Davila said.
Wilkins’ billboards, including one near Times Square and another in Atlanta, were taken down yesterday. They had displayed a photo of Wilkins and Phillips canoodling and directed onlookers to a Web site full of photos of the couple.
Davila said Wilkins was not trying to embarrass Phillips.
“She wanted to show that she was not insignificant to him, that the relationship was real,” Davila said. “She thought friends and family would go to the site. She didn’t expect it to turn into what it is.”