The Kellers and Their Millions

First Comes Pre-Nup

After a series of phone conversations, Keller offered to pay Rose's way to the United States so they could meet.

Their nervous first embrace was on March 26, 1992, at Miami International Airport.

Keller could not believe his good fortune. If anything, Rose was even lovelier in person than in her picture.

Nor was she disappointed. Keller was tall, slim and athletic—not the build of a man knocking on dotage's door.

He wore a neatly cropped gray beard, and he carried himself erectly and with confidence, like the self-assured millionaire that he was.

They chatted in German—Keller's first language as a child—and "immediately hit it off," a lawyer would later say. "It was love at first sight."

Over the next few days, Keller wined, dined and fawned over his Deutsche fraulein. She stayed at his estate at 225 Dunbar Road in Lake Worth, on the exclusive Florida seacoast spit that stretches 25 miles from Jupiter to Boynton Beach.

Keller showed Keil around south Florida in the springtime sunshine, pointedly driving past a number of his real estate holdings.

Within 48 hours of meeting the young German, Keller knew he had no intention of letting her go back home.

He invited her to stay in the United States, and her scheduled one-week stay became a month, then two.

Keller proposed in May, presenting Rose with a diamond ring the size of a mib marble.

It's not clear how much Keller told Rose about his life during their brief courtship. Everyone has baggage, of course, but Keller had enough to fill a moving truck—among other things, four marriages, a mysterious change of his surname and a bizarre domestic abduction during his first marriage.

In any case, Rose accepted Fred Keller's proposal. But before any wedding, there were several sticky details to be worked out.

First, Keller revealed that he had been diagnosed recently with leukemia, although his doctors gave a good chance of full recovery. This did not alter Rose's decision.

The second problem was procreation.

Rose wanted a child. Keller, a father of three from his first marriage, had had a vasectomy while in his mid-early 30s. He was finished with all that. On the other hand, Keller was aroused by Rose's potential as superior breeding stock, a subject that had always fascinated him. He agreed to have his vasectomy surgically reversed.

The final issue was money. Keller brought $17 million into the relationship. Rose brought the clothes on her back.

Fred with son Fredchen Keller

Keller had an attorney draw up a prenuptial agreement in which Rose would waive any right to the property that Keller owned before the marriage. The agreement also stipulated that, in the event of divorce, Rose's claim would never exceed 10 percent of Keller's assets.

She signed.