Allison Cowles To Marry Ceo Of New York Times

Allison Cowles, a Spokane civic leader for the past 36 years, is marrying Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The New York Times Co.

The couple will marry March 9 in a small family ceremony in Spokane.

Cowles is the widow of William H. Cowles, 3rd, who was president and publisher of The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Chronicle when he died April 18, 1992.

Allison Cowles and Sulzberger will live in Spokane part of the year - and she plans to stay involved in the community.

Cowles, 61, is a director at Seafirst Bank, vice chair of Mount Spokane 2000 and chair of the advisory board for the Spokane branch campus of Washington State University. She also is co-chair of the WSU Spokane Capital Campaign and serves on the Sports, Entertainment, Arts & Convention Advisory Board (SEA-CAB).

“We will be going back and forth between Spokane and New York,” she said in an interview Monday. “I will keep up my commitments as best I can, and Punch will spend as much time as he can here.”

Sulzberger, 70, was publisher of The New York Times until his son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., took over in 1992. He is chairman of the board for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sulzberger’s wife, Carol, died in August 1995.

The two newspaper families have a shared history that goes back to the early 1900s. Adolph S. Ochs, Sulzberger’s grandfather, and W.H. Cowles, grandfather of William H. Cowles, 3rd, served together for many years on The Associated Press board.

“I’m completely thrilled about the marriage,” said Cowles’ son, Stacey Cowles, publisher of The Spokesman-Review. “It’s a real joy to see them both so happy. You can’t hope for anything more than that. He’s a great guy. We share newspaper and family associations that go back almost a century.”

, DataTimes