Who

The editor-in-chief of Us Weekly, Min is the woman who keeps America informed on what Britney did last night, who Paris is sleeping with, and what rehab clinic Lindsay is currently residing at. She reports to Jann Wenner.

Backstory

The daughter of Korean immigrants—her father, Hong, was a professor of physiology—Min was raised in Littleton, Colorado, and worked at McDonalds and Target as a teenager. After attending Columbia and staying on to earn a master's in journalism, she took a job at a Westchester daily. But she soon turned to gossip, joining the staff of People in 1992. Min climbed the ranks to senior editor and earned kudos for coverage of the death of Princess Di before leaving for Life and then InStyle, joining Us as executive editor in 2002. When her boss, Bonnie Fuller, defected to David Pecker's AMI a year later, Min landed the top job.

Of note

When Fuller left Us, many media observers suspected the magazine would suffer without the tabloid queen at the helm. Unproven and a little green, there was speculation Min would have a hard time competing with Star, the title Fuller planned to revamp as part of her new job as editorial director of David Pecker's AMI media empire. Min proceeded to surprise everyone by not only keeping Us afloat, but by also ramping up circulation and advertising. These days Us boasts a hefty circulation of 1.9 million—the mag is now second only to People in the category and has nearly three times as many subscribers as Fuller's Star. It also reportedly generates a $60 million annual profit, which not only makes it one of the more profitable magazines around, but also helps her boss, Jann Wenner, pay for the less successful vanity titles under his control like Rolling Stone.

Keeping score

Min's contract pays her $1.2 million per year, plus performance-based bonuses. She renewed her contract in July 2007.

Personal

Min is relatively low key: Unlike the people she covers in the pages of Us, she doesn't smoke, drink to excess, do drugs, have illicit affairs in the office. And she's married to a history teacher, of all things. She met Peter Sheehy when the two lived next door to each other as juniors at Columbia. Sheehy taught American history at Horace Mann for a number of years before leaving on a "sabbatical" as a result of his role in the school's 2006 Facebook scandal, a saga described in a March 2008 New York cover story. The couple have two sons—Will and Tate—and live in an apartment at 285 Lafayette Street that they bought for $4 million. They sold their previous place in the meatpacking district to Robert K. Futterman for $3.15 million in 2006.