The Reliable Source

We suspected something was up when Clifton resident Charis Boyle,Playboy magazine's Miss February, declined to divulge her maritalstatus.

"I like to keep my private life private," Boyle told us Monday --although Playboy's glossy 10-page spread reveals that she doesn'tmind making her private parts public.

Yesterday we figured it out: Boyle -- who is indeed married toWashington nightclubber John Boyle, who owns 5, Modern and Nation(and whose father, Jack Boyle, founded Cellar Door Productions) -- isalso known as Charis (rhymes with Paris) Van Metre. The Van Metresare among the Washington area's richer and more socially prominentfamilies -- not Playboy's usual spawning ground.

Charis's grandfather is the fabulously wealthy philanthropist andworld-class yachtsman Albert G. Van Metre Sr., whose NorthernVirginia-based Van Metre Cos., a real estate and developmentconglomerate, have built more than 9,000 houses in the Washingtonarea since 1955. (Coincidentally, that's around the time Hugh Hefnerlaunched his groundbreaking magazine.) Charis's father, Albert Jr. --better known as Beau Van Metre -- is the firm's vice chairman. Othermembers of the Van Metre clan are denizens of horse country and thesocial register.

We wondered what Boyle's upmarket relatives think of her star turnin Hef's nudie mag, so we asked her grandmother Charlotte CroffordVan Metre, of Northwest Washington, and her aunt Alison Van MetrePaley, of McLean and Lyford Cay, Bahamas.

"I'm very sorry, I can't talk to you -- and I don't think AlisonPaley will, either. Thank you," Charlotte Van Metre said frostilybefore hanging up on us.

"I don't want to talk about it. Thank you," Alison Paley, thedaughter-in-law of the late CBS founder William S. Paley, saidfrostily before hanging up on us.

Charis Boyle was also frosty. "Why would I want to do anyinterview with you?" she demanded. When we told her that hergrandmother and her aunt had hung up on us, she responded, "I candefinitely play that game with you." And then she hung up.

Thus we didn't have a chance to ask about the many softcoreInternet photos of her that instantly appeared on our screen when weplugged her name into the Yahoo! search engine.

Happily, her dad was a good sport. "I have not actually seenPlayboy, so I just don't have a comment," Beau Van Metre told us. "Ican't tell you what the family response to her is. But what Charishas done is quite ambitious. A lot of people in the family areambitious. And we all have different avenues to express that. Charishas picked this avenue, but I don't think there's a negative orpositive aspect to it."

In her "Playmate Data Sheet," Boyle says she's 26 and confidesthat her "turn-ons" are men who are "honest and confident. Assertiveand spontaneous." Turnoffs: "Weak, shallow and generally unhappypeople. Hairy backs, Billy Bob teeth and someone who makes a lot ofnoise when they eat."

Guess she means us.

Blond-tressed actress Portia de Rossi -- busily promoting TNT'sJFK Jr. biopic, "America's Prince," in which she plays CarolynBessette Kennedy -- has been regaling interviewers with the story ofher encounter with John F. Kennedy Jr.'s wife at the White HouseCorrespondents' Association dinner in May 1999, two months before theKennedys died in a plane crash. "I felt this sharp tug on myponytail," she tells TV Guide. "I whipped around, and Carolyn hadthis huge grin on her face. She said, 'What, are you trying to looklike me?' " In yesterday's USA Today, de Rossi related the sameanecdote and added the observation: "It was prophetic."

We obtained photos of the two women from that fateful night. Kennedy's hair was sleek and severe, but we couldn't locate deRossi's "ponytail" in her wild cascade of curls, leading us to wonderif the story is apocryphal.

But de Rossi's publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, insisted at first thatit was true. "I know it happened because Portia told me about it atthe time," Schaeffer told us. But a couple of hours later -- afterconsulting with her client -- Schaeffer said the incident might haveoccurred at a George magazine event in New York.

We'll have to look for those photos.

Congratulations to BBC World News Washington anchor Mishal Husainon her engagement to that "London lawyer" we mentioned, grudgingly,when we wrote about Husain in November. The 29-year-old Husain toldus that Meekal Hashmi, 32, came to visit over the holidays and poppedthe question as they were strolling near the Jefferson Memorial. Thetwo have known each other "all our lives," Husain told us yesterday,but have been dating only for the past year. A diamond ring isforthcoming.