This Playmate of the Year is a Playmate for a Lifetime

Seventeen Months Ago, she left her British Columbia home and flew to Los Angeles, touching off an international affair that has been chronicled around the world. As Miss January 1988, Canada's gift to Playboy mused, "I'm in control of my own destiny, and whatever it is, it's going to be fun." And fun it has been, for a mere six months later, standing beside the Wishing Well on the grounds of Playboy Mansion West, Kimberley Conrad said yes to a destiny she--and countless others--had long believed was fantasy. She agreed to wed Hugh M. Hefner, a man who was thought to be the pajama-clad icon of bachelorhood. Sitting in the Mansion Library, her long, perfect legs curled under her, Kimberley recalls the night Hefner popped the question no one thought he had in him. "It was July twenty-third of last year," she recalls. "It was a beautiful, romantic night, and Hef and I had been playing Foosball in the Game House. I was in a wonderful mood, since I had won, and as we walked back to the main house, Hef stopped me by the Wishing Well. He was very calm, very sweet. 'Will you marry me?' he asked. I said I would have to think it over. You should have seen his jaw drop." She laughs, remembering that magical evening. "I thought about it for about two seconds. Then I said, 'Of course I'll marry you.'" The wedding and gala reception are scheduled for July first at Playboy Mansion West. The ceremony itself will take place, naturally enough, beside the Wishing Well--where Hef proposed nearly a year earlier.

Dressed simply in bride-white tennis duds, she nuzzles her beagle, Boots. Curled beside her is Dior, her Doberman. Kimberley, who is Playboy's 1989 Playmate of the Year as well as Hef's fiancée, has introduced two dogs and a cat to the Mansion. But when she moved in, she brought something much more important than a menagerie to Hef's life. January 1988 was not the happiest time for Hef, who was just emerging from a bad relationship. Kimberley had flown in from Vancouver for a two-day shooting with famed photographer Helmut Newton, who was working on a special project for Playboy. She was no stranger to the Mansion, having stayed there several times while shooting her centerfold and pictorial. "I had admired her from afar," admits Hef now. "So I asked her to join a small group of us for a screening in the Living Room." Kimberley politely declined. "In part out of self-defense," she explains. "I knew I was attracted to him, but I also knew he had his choice of hundreds of women. And I certainly was not going to be a one-night stand." But the next night, she was drawn into casual conversation with Hef and some friends around the Dining Room table. During that evening, both Kimberley and Hef let down their guard long enough to admit to a strong case of mutual attraction. Kimberley left the next day, with plans to return the following week for a longer visit. Their long weekend together proved what they had already suspected: Theirs was a very special relationship. "She returned to Vancouver to collect her belongings and was back in my arms within a few days, where she has been ever since," says Hef happily. "This relationship is simply too special to end."

He treats me like royalty," says Kimberley, "and I have to admit that I love it. People always ask about the difference in our ages. I'm twenty-six. He's sixtytwo. But he looks forty, and the way he thinks, the way he moves--it's like he's my age. And there's a lot of passion in our relationship. He's very passionate. Of course," she adds with a little smile, "I do take credit for some of the passion myself." Kimberley is not publicly flamboyant; she is actually something of a private person and still not completely at ease in crowds. She does her best at the parties, press conferences, interviews and photo sessions her new life demands, she says, but she worries that her best may not always be good enough. She always wants her best to be better. That self-improvement impulse is apparent even in her physical view of herself.

Unbelievably, Kimberley worries that her pictures aren't pretty enough. She says she likes her famous front but isn't so sure about her backside. "My bum could look better," she says. "I'm building it up in the weight room." She was so sure she'd be a runner-up that she would not believe she'd won until the pictures you see on these pages were sent to the printer. "Becoming Playmate of the Year is as unbelievable to me as anything else. I probably should have listened to my friend Ken Honey," she says, referring to the veteran Vancouver photographer who has discovered virtually all of the Playmates who came to us from British Columbia, including 1980 Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten, Heidi Sorenson, Kelly Tough, Lonny Chin and a half dozen other gatefold girls. "It was Ken who first encouraged me to try out for Playmate, telling me that one day I'd be Playmate of the Year. I laughed. I didn't believe him then, and, frankly, it's hard to believe even now."

As Playmate of the Year, Kimberley is the surprised owner of a check for $100,000. A hefty chunk of that allotment will go to her granny, whom she still calls "Mema Lila" in fond baby talk. The rest, as befits a self-described "practical girl," will roll over forever in money-market funds. So much for the practical. Kimberley's other Playmate of the Year award, a pearlscent white Porsche 911 Cabriolet, is impractical to the tune of 149 miles per hour and 24 miles per gallon. Pragmatism has its limits. "I got one without scoops and fins, a real lady's car," she says, "so people won't see me drive by and say, 'That's her boyfriend's car.'" Earning those wheels was not easy for the shy Alabama-born beauty, who admits, "It's a lot easier to be naked with the person I'm in love with." (text concluded on page 152)Playmate of the Year(continued from page 136)

To watch Hef and Kimberley is to see a couple in love with being in love. "Hef wants me close," she says. "He worries when I'm away. Not that I mind." Whenever she leaves the Mansion grounds, she carries a cellular phone. They talk while she shops. They exchange pet names. He leaves love notes under her pillow, decorated with a hand-drawn heart over his signature. As a surprise for him (stop reading now, Hef), she will have her wedding gown embellished with a heart outlined in pearls. Inside it will be two sets of initials, H.M.H. for him, K.C.H.--Kimberley Conrad Hefner--for her.

Is it unseemly that Hef's fiancée is also Playmate of the Year? "It's an honor she clearly deserves," replies Hef. "I can't take it away from her just because we've fallen in love." And he would certainly get no argument from one of the biggest supporters of the relationship--Kimberley's mother.

"My mom loves Hef. She knows how much self-confidence he has given me. In fact," says Kimberley with a laugh, "she told me she'd kill me if anything happened to the relationship."

Lovers have a way of sounding the same in all ages and all places. Shy, nervous Kimberley Conrad is not so different from any other fiancée. Sometimes, she says, she "chokes up, crying," for no reason other than joy. Sometimes she is downright giddy. When Hef showed up at the studio during her photo shoot, she giggled like a girl who had never before been naked in a man's presence. As she plans her July first wedding, she lavishes each contingency with a love-struck bride's attention to detail. How long should her gown be? How many guests should they invite? Given her druthers, she would have a small wedding--family, a few friends, a minister, a kiss and a quick getaway.

Hef and Kimberley do not rule out having a child but say they are marrying solely for love. It will be one of the most startling developments of the century if Hef, whose career has symbolized bachelorhood, comes to represent marriage, American style, in the Nineties.

"People often accuse me of living out what they perceive as adolescent fantasies. In a way, they're right," admits Hef. "We all have our fantasies. I have just lived out mine in a very public way. But what I didn't dream was that this angel would come along and make the last of it the very best of it."

Kimberley, for her part, is taking life one day at a time. She looks at the picture of herself and Hef that's displayed on the new 35th Anniversary Playboy Pin-ball machine and still can't imagine what the next set of photos will look like--Kimberley in bridal white, on the day that this Playmate of the Year becomes the Playmate for a Lifetime.