Meet the Yarbies: Karl Stefanovic’s wealthy new in-laws
While viewers are turning off, Karl Stefanovic’s wealthy new in-laws have welcomed him into their stylish family.
Inside a colonial mansion perched high on an Ascot hill in Brisbane’s elite old-money suburb, the love is peaking for Karl Stefanovic.
He may be on the nose with some Today show viewers for leaving his first wife but in lofty Ascot, the jacarandas are in bloom, the wedding’s on and Karl is a favoured son.
The Yarbroughs, or Yarby family, as the TV star’s imminent new in-laws call themselves, are gearing up for daughter Jasmine to become Karl’s second wife.
The lavish wedding is set for December 8 in a luxury Mexican resort on the tip of the Baja California peninsula.
The wedding is a drawcard for paparazzi, who are expected to swarm off the coast of the Sea of Cortez next month.
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The groom’s bitter fall out with his ex-wife of 21 years, Cassandra Thorburn, has partly fuelled interest in Stefanovic’s forthcoming nuptials.
But if replacing the mother of his three children with a glamorous younger woman turned female viewers cold on Stefanovic, the Gold Logie winner has been warmly embraced by Jasmine’s family.
Welcomed into the comfortable lifestyle enjoyed by the affluent Brisbane family, Stefanovic is regarded by his new mother-in-law as one of “our boys”.
Cheryl Yarbrough, also known as “Chezza”, is a teacher at Brisbane’s elite private girls school St Margaret’s.
Facebook photographs posted by Cheryl show Karl to be very close to his prospective new father-in-law, packaging executive Bob Yarbrough.
In one image, “Bobby” or “Daddy”, as number one daughter Jasmine calls him, is wearing matching Christmas shirts with Karl, who playfully aims a kiss at Bob’s cheek.
It was Bob who picked Karl up and drove him to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast for the buck’s party early this month.
The scenes are at odds with Karl’s reported relationship with his own father.
Alex Stefanovic revealed to a magazine in 2015 that he had become estranged from sons Peter and Karl after divorcing Karl’s mother Jenny.
Up in Yarby-land, however, Karl appears to have been unconditionally accepted and invited along wherever the Yarbroughs go.
Ironically, while Stefanovic may be a $2-million-plus-a-year television show host, it is only via his romance with Yarbrough that he is a regular invited guest at one of Brisbane’s most prestigious addresses.
Ascot’s millionaire’s row is socially much farther than the 20km drive from the suburb of Capalaba, all the way over the river on Brisbane’s lower-class south side, where Stefanovic grew up.
Before he fell in with the likes of casino mogul James Packer, Stefanovic was a boy from a family where money was “tight”.
His financial adviser father Alex scraped together the fees for the private boys school “Churchie”, Brisbane’s Anglican Church Grammar School.
But as Karl told Fairfax Media: “I was always the wog and had the wog name.
“I always felt a bit conscious of the fact these kids had flash cars and big houses and we were struggling.”
After the family moved to Cairns, Serbian-born Alex Stefanovic went into debt with an ill-fated business venture, lost the family house and Karl’s parents divorced.
As a young man trying to make it in television in Brisbane, Karl lived in friends’ garages and shifted with his father between rental properties.
In his very early 20s, Stefanovic met Cassandra Thorburn at a party - she was a country Victorian girl four years older than him working on local ABC radio.
That was 1995. Thorburn and Stefanovic had Jackson, daughter Ava and son River before separating in September 2016 and divorcing last year.
In February this year, Stefanovic announced his engagement to Jasmine Yarbrough.
Apart from living in Brisbane’s wealthiest suburb, the Yarbrough family holidays at Wategos Beach, Byron Bay’s own playground for the rich where rentals cost $1000 a night.
In Wategos, the happy couple visit Raes, an opulent boutique hotel retreat on absolute beachfront where Stefanovic has been photographed with his fiancee in his goofy favourite Akubra.
The 43-year-old, who is nine years older than fiancee Jasmine, has become chummy with his future sister-in-law Jade and brother-in-law Josh.
The three genetically blessed Yarbrough siblings, who collectively call themselves “JY3”, have all enjoyed private school educations and success as adults working in the fashion industry.
Jasmine and Jade are believed to have attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School, to which Cheryl and Bob Yarbrough are benefactors.
As a close relative of the former archbishop of Brisbane and Governor-General Peter Hollingworth, Cheryl Yarbrough is a member of the city’s Anglican elite.
She has reason to be proud of all her three children, with Jasmine co-founding luxury shoe brand Mara&Mine and Jade the interiors brand, Merci Maison.
On her LinkedIn page, Jasmine describes her slip-on mules as “lust-worthy, risk-taking and bold … the ultimate ‘it’ shoe”, which has been worn by Kendall Jenner and Margot Robbie.
Josh Yarbrough lives in Los Angeles where he works as a fashion and art designer and dates New Zealand supermodel, Emily May Baker, who Cheryl Yarbrough calls “our Josh’s Em”.
Before meeting Stefanovic at a Sydney boating party months after his split from Thorburn, Jasmine Yarbrough dated Wallabies player Drew Mitchell, later a boyfriend of Delta Goodrem.
She has become friendly with her new sister-in-law, Today star Sylvia Jeffreys, who married Nine reporter Peter Stefanovic in Kangaroo Valley in April last year.
That wedding will appear like a barn dance in comparison to the Karl and Jasmine’s at One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos, Mexico.
The resort bills itself as “gracious splendour that has to be seen to be believed”.
It was reported of Jasmine in July that “she wants a big splashy wedding and he is determined to deliver”, although back then private Fijian Kokomo Island was the rumoured venue.
The cost of the Mexican wedding has yet to be calculated, and it is unclear which members of Stefanovic’s family will attend.
Meanwhile, speculation continues over Karl Stefanovic’s future at the Today show.
Since 2005, when he took over the co-host role from Steve Liebmann, Karl has regularly expressed his desire to return to news reporting, in particular at 60 Minutes.
His contract at Today has trebled over the past six years from a comparatively modest $600,000 in 2011.
But divorce has somewhat dimmed his star power.
Stefanovic’s trademark irreverence, schoolboy pranks and legendary Logies partying were acceptable while he was solidly married.
Suddenly separated and with a new woman, the irrepressible larrikin’s naughty humour seemed out of kilter.
After the wedding of the decade next month, will viewers forgive the newly married Karl?
Will he abandon the breakfast grind and primary school bedtime hours to stay up and drink wine with his new wife?
Or will the Today show step away from him?
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