Paula Zahn’s teed-off hubby didn’t know that steamy sex trysts between his wife and an old pal were par for the course for years.
Maybe he should have.
The illicit, years-long love affair between Zahn and business big Paul Fribourg was sizzling even as Fribourg hit the golf links with Zahn’s real-estate magnate husband, Richard Cohen, sources told The Post yesterday.
“Richard feels betrayed,” one pal said – and he only found out the truth from a tell-all manuscript Zahn wrote that documents her relationship with ContiGroup CEO Fribourg.
“It’s a lurid and shocking handwritten account of their relationship,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified.
Sources declined to discuss any details of Zahn’s “love book” or where exactly it was found, except to say, “She was indiscreet.”
The former CNN anchor’s affair with Fribourg became public knowledge in April, when it was announced that Zahn and Cohen were parting ways after 20 years.
“He’s told friends her affair just took his heart out,” the pal said.
Friends said Cohen had believed the relationship was a recent development, but Zahn’s book shows their relationship was much more “long-term” than Cohen had ever suspected.
“This had been going on at least a couple of years,” another friend said. “It clearly spells out the relationship. There’s no mystery – it has plenty of detail.”
The friend described the book as “as something like a high school girl would write. It’s child-like and devastating.
At the time the pair hooked up, Cohen and Fribourg were “playing golf together, tennis together. Their families spent time with each other.”
Fribourg, a father of four, is now getting divorced from his stunning wife, Josabeth.
Zahn, 51, and Cohen haven’t yet filed divorce papers, and Cohen’s friends said he thought they were trying to work out an amicable agreement until Friday, when Zahn socked him with a lawsuit demanding he account for the whereabouts of her estimated $25 million in earnings over the past 20 years.
The suit accused Cohen, who’s acted as Zahn’s financial manager since 1986, of putting much of her money into “highly illiquid limited liability companies.”
It also charged that “some of her earnings had been diverted to Mr. Cohen’s individual account . . . for his own use and benefit.”
A source close to Cohen said Zahn was actually the one using smoke and mirrors in a bid to try to weasel out of their prenuptial agreement.
“She wants one way or another to break the agreement and go after his entire net worth,” the source said of the out-of-work TV personality.
“Richard would like to end this in keeping with total regard for the prenup, which will still leave her a very wealthy woman, with tens of millions of dollars,” the source said.
The source also angrily denied a report that Cohen had refused to come to terms on a deal for custody and visitation rights for their three kids unless she dropped her demand for an accounting.
“That’s nonsense. Cohen’s lawyer drafted a custody agreement and faxed it over to [Zahn’s lawyer] last week. He’s been waiting for a response,” the source said. “He doesn’t want to drag their children through the mud,” said one friend. “If they’re going to stoop into the sewer, he’s not going to go with them.”
Zahn’s lawyers didn’t return calls for comment.
Additional reporting by Jana Winter