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"View Slideshow\n\nLucky for Regis Philbin that real life is more forgiving than television. For unlike guests on his show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, he&amp;#39;s been able to go back on a decision with no serious loss of face.\n\nAvuncular and proudly un-reluctant where his celebrity is concerned, Philbin moved to Manhattan from Hollywood in 1983 to launch The Morning Show on ABC. His famously dimpled wife, Joy Philbin, was left behind that first summer to bubble-wrap the old pictures of her husband as Joey Bishop&amp;#39;s sidekick, sell the plants (her green thumb is legendary) and ease the transition for their children. Of all the things she catalogued and crated to cross the country, Regis Philbin&amp;#39;s fabled collection of Jerry Vale and Dean Martin records was perhaps the most important. Counting the days until his records and family arrived, he was struck with how melancholy and depopulated the city became in summer.\n\n&amp;quot;I caught on right away,&amp;quot; he remembers. &amp;quot;We needed a country place.&amp;quot;\n\nBut the house the couple bought in Bedford, New York, was freighted with problems. The Philbins are tennis junkies, and wetland restrictions, plus a neighbor who vowed to charge them with supposed property-line violations, quashed their plans to build a court. Another sticking point: Their daughters, Jennifer and Joanna, were bored out of their young minds. &amp;quot;Deadford,&amp;quot; they called it.\n\nCutting their losses, the Philbins crossed the state line into Connecticut. Built in 1979, the low-slung house they purchased from sportscaster Warner Wolf in Greenwich\u2014prime John Cheever country\u2014is dignified with faint Norman manorisms, including quoins, dormers and a ruddy brick fa\u00E7ade. It&amp;#39;s as unshowy as the neighboring piles are eye-popping. To the Philbins&amp;#39; great relief, the property came furnished with a tennis court, the town with a plugged-in scene that delighted their children. Regis Philbin swears that Greenwich is his final answer to the question of where he can be found on weekends and for the two weeks every August when Live with Regis and Kelly, his morning &amp;quot;talker,&amp;quot; goes on vacation.\n\nDesigner Katherine Stephens and the Philbins proved such a sympathetic fit in Bedford, no one else was entertained when the Connecticut job came up. Pretty as a petit four and southern as Spanish moss, Stephens met Regis Philbin in 1985 when she appeared on The Morning Show for a spot on window shades. Off camera, he mentioned that his wife might need some help with their place in Manhattan. Stephens and Joy Philbin didn&amp;#39;t become the kind of friends designers and clients routinely become as a result of working closely together\u2014they became great friends. The real measure of their relationship is taken not when they&amp;#39;re bent over a swatch book or studying paint chips but when they&amp;#39;re shuffling around the kitchen making coffee in Greenwich (&amp;quot;Don&amp;#39;t forget an extra spoon for the pot!&amp;quot;).\n\nAs Stephens has witnessed from simple outings with her pal to the Clinique counter, say, at Bloomingdale&amp;#39;s, Joy Philbin has her own considerable fan base. &amp;quot;Strangers come right up to her as if she were family,&amp;quot; says Stephens. Connoisseurs of Live who go back to the earliest Kathie Lee days say the program is never so warm, fuzzy and spontaneous as when Joy Philbin sits in as guest cohost.\n\n&amp;quot;The hardest part about doing the show is not knowing what Regis is going to say, especially during the opening host chat, which is totally unscripted,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s flying without a net.&amp;quot; Not that she depends on her husband for work, thank you very much. As the host of HGTV&amp;#39;s At Home With, Joy Philbin unflinchingly and at quite amazing length examines the curtain rods and backsplashes of people like Dionne Warwick (&amp;quot;very Southwest&amp;quot;), Larry King (&amp;quot;wonderful Mediterranean feel&amp;quot;) and Ivana Trump (&amp;quot;sumptuous Old World&amp;quot;). She likens the show to Life-styles of the Rich and Famous\u2014&amp;quot;only chicer.&amp;quot;\n\nJoy Philbin has proved an excellent design student, learning that while gimp and cord are both passementerie, they are not the same thing. She also knows what she likes, her traditional vision of domesticity embracing all the requisite features of the American Good Life. With its beefy buffalo checks, deep overscale upholstered pieces and rush-seated Proven\u00E7al-style chairs, the family room must be the envy of the Philbins&amp;#39; constituency from Topeka to Tallahassee. The genteel sound of tall spoons in tall iced-tea glasses tinkles off the porch, a &amp;quot;summer living room&amp;quot; with classic wick-er furniture, hanging flower baskets and inexpensive wash-able rag rugs Stephens says become lovelier as they age and fade. And who of the 36 million people who tuned in to Millionaire at its peak wouldn&amp;#39;t kill for the 36-inch pop-up television in a lavishly draped, heavily fringed, altarlike cabinet in the master bedroom?\n\nAsked about his own role in getting the Greenwich house in order, Regis Philbin says that Katherine Stephens and his wife took special pains to involve him in all their decisions. &amp;quot;They ran things by me\u2014even if I would have preferred that they hadn&amp;#39;t so I could complain later. But really, this place is all Joy&amp;#39;s doing,&amp;quot; he insists. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m a simple man. I had no demands, no requirements.&amp;quot;\n\nIs that your final answer?\n\nPause.\n\n&amp;quot;The pop-up television is me.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/philbin-article-062002>