Missing Sub Pilot's Wife Has Eerie Tie to Titanic

If the worst-case scenario about the missing submersible in the Atlantic unfolds, Wendy Rush would have the unfortunate fate of losing three family members in the vicinity of what's now the wreck of the Titanic. According to the New York Times, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, who were among the wealthiest people to board the Titanic for its maiden voyage in 1912. As the Times reports, first-class passenger Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy's, refused to board a lifeboat ahead of remaining women and children as the ocean liner filled with water, and his wife refused to leave him behind. Witnesses described seeing the couple standing arm in arm on the deck of the ship as it sank beneath the waves.

Isidor's body was found at sea weeks after the sinking, but his wife's was never found, per the Independent. It's a "tragic love story ... immortalized in pop culture by the director James Cameron, whose 1997 film about the disaster features a poignant shot of an older couple embracing in bed as the waters rise around their cabin," per the Times. Wendy Rush, born Wendy Hollings Weil, descended from the Strauses' daughter Minnie and her husband, Dr. Richard Weil.

Their son, Richard Weil Jr., the late Macy's New York president, was her grandfather. Wendy Rush is connected to the Titanic herself, having participated in three expeditions to the wreckage hundreds of miles off the Atlantic coast, according to her LinkedIn page. She also serves as communications director of OceanGate. Her husband was piloting the submersible that vanished over the weekend while on a trip to the Titanic. (More Titanic stories.)