Leopold Stanislaus “Stan” Stokowski is the eldest son of artist, designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and celebrated conductor Leopold Stokowski. Born on August 22, 1950, he is 75 as of August 12, 2026. He is also the full brother of Christopher Stokowski and the maternal half-brother of Carter Vanderbilt Cooper and CNN journalist Anderson Cooper.
Despite belonging to a family closely associated with American society, music and media, Stan built a professional life largely outside celebrity culture. His documented career has centered on gardening, ornamental horticulture and landscape design, including landscaping businesses in New York and New England and work in the Hamptons.
He should not be confused with his father, Leopold Anthony Stokowski, the renowned conductor who lived from 1882 to 1977. Contemporary reporting commonly refers to the younger man simply as Stan Stokowski, helping distinguish his career and identity from his father’s.
Growing up in the Vanderbilt-Stokowski family
Stan was born during Gloria Vanderbilt’s marriage to Leopold Stokowski. He was their first son, followed by Christopher Stokowski in 1952.
His mother was already one of the best-known members of the Vanderbilt family, while his father had established an international reputation as a conductor. The elder Stokowski was closely associated with orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra and later founded the American Symphony Orchestra in 1962.
After Vanderbilt’s marriage to Stokowski ended, she later married writer Wyatt Cooper. Their sons, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper and Anderson Cooper, became Stan’s maternal half-brothers.
The family connection is well established in the historical record. A Toni Frissell photograph preserved by the Library of Congress and dated May 1964 identifies Gloria Vanderbilt, Wyatt Cooper, Christopher Stokowski and Stan Stokowski together.
Stan’s own adult life, however, developed in a markedly different professional direction from his father’s music career and Anderson Cooper’s work in television journalism.
A career in gardening and landscape design
The clearest evidence about Stan’s professional life points to horticulture and landscape work.
In a 2009 W Magazine profile based on an interview with Gloria Vanderbilt, she referred to her eldest son as “Stan (Leopold Stanislaus)” and said that he ran a gardening business in Sag Harbor, New York. More recent reporting has described him as having owned landscaping businesses in New York and New England.
His expertise appears to have gone beyond simply operating a gardening company. The East Hampton Star described him in 2017 as a gardener with a background in ornamental horticulture, providing one of the more specific accounts of his professional specialization.
Architectural Digest also documented him working as a landscape designer in the Hamptons. In its coverage of a renovated summer house in Sagaponack, the magazine credited local landscape designer Stan Stokowski with overseeing the property’s grounds.
That project offers a rare public example of his professional work. It also helps establish a more precise description of his career than the generic “businessman” label sometimes attached to members of prominent families.
Stan has additionally been associated with New Ground Gardens LLC in New York. A New York State Arborists directory lists a Stan Stokowski with the company, matching the name, profession and geographic area documented elsewhere. Because the directory does not show when the individual entry was last updated, it does not establish that the company remains his current business in 2026.
A low-key public life in the Hamptons
Much of the available reporting about Stan places him around Long Island’s East End, particularly Sag Harbor and other Hamptons communities. That setting overlaps naturally with his work in gardens and landscape design.
His public profile has nevertheless remained limited. Unlike Gloria Vanderbilt or Anderson Cooper, Stan has not developed a career that requires frequent media appearances or extensive public commentary.
He has occasionally appeared at family-related events. Reporting places him at Gloria Vanderbilt’s art exhibition in 2012 and at the 2016 premiere of Nothing Left Unsaid, the documentary in which Anderson Cooper explored his mother’s life and family history.
Those appearances show that he has not been entirely absent from public family occasions, but they remain exceptions in a life whose documented public record is dominated more by horticultural work than by media activity.
Marriage and children
Public reporting identifies Emily Goldstein as one of Stan Stokowski’s wives. W Magazine referred to Goldstein as his wife in 2009, and the East Hampton Star did the same in 2017. More recent reporting also includes her in accounts of his family life, although the available evidence does not specifically establish their marital status as of August 2026.
He was previously married to Ivy Strick, according to PEOPLE’s 2026 profile of Gloria Vanderbilt’s children.
The strongest current reporting establishes that Stan has at least two daughters, Aurora and Abra. Available sources are not strong enough to determine conclusively whether those two daughters represent his complete number of children, so a more definitive count would go beyond the verified public record.
That distinction matters because some online biographical pages circulate additional names without sufficiently authoritative documentation.
His place in the Vanderbilt family after Gloria’s death
Gloria Vanderbilt died in June 2019 at age 95. In the reporting that followed, questions about the Vanderbilt family’s wealth and inheritance again brought Stan’s name into the public record.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Vanderbilt’s will left her Midtown Manhattan co-op to Stan, while Anderson Cooper received the balance of her estate. That reporting should not be interpreted as evidence of Stan’s present wealth.
Claims about the size of Vanderbilt’s estate were themselves disputed at the time. The Los Angeles Times noted that a widely circulated figure of roughly $200 million was challenged by a source close to the family, who said the estate was worth substantially less.
For that reason, there is no responsible basis for assigning Stan Stokowski a current net-worth figure from his family background or reported inheritance. Reliable public sources do not disclose enough information about his assets, debts or business holdings to calculate one.
A possible continuing connection to his father’s musical legacy
Although Stan followed a professional path far removed from orchestral music, recent American Symphony Orchestra materials suggest a continuing family connection.
Official orchestra programs from January and July 2026 list an “L. Stan Stokowski” as an honorary member. The name and context strongly indicate Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski, particularly because his father founded the American Symphony Orchestra in 1962.
The programs, however, do not explicitly identify the honorary member as Gloria Vanderbilt’s son or spell out his full middle name. The association is therefore highly plausible rather than independently confirmed by a detailed institutional biography.
Even with that qualification, the listing illustrates how the Stokowski name continues to intersect with the institution his father established more than six decades ago.
Final thoughts
Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski is best understood not simply as Gloria Vanderbilt’s son or Anderson Cooper’s half-brother, but as a member of a famous family who developed a distinct professional identity in horticulture and landscape design.
His public record is relatively modest, but it is specific: he has run gardening and landscaping businesses, has a documented background in ornamental horticulture and has worked as a landscape designer in the Hamptons. At the same time, his occasional appearances at family events and the apparent continuing association of his name with the American Symphony Orchestra keep him connected to the Vanderbilt and Stokowski legacies.
What remains publicly known about him is narrower than many online biographies suggest. His education, complete business history, precise current marital status, full number of children and personal net worth are not sufficiently established by reliable sources. The evidence instead supports a concise picture of Stan Stokowski as a horticulture professional who has spent most of his adult life outside the level of public attention surrounding his parents and famous half-brother.
