Robert & Beverly Cohen: Building Hotels and the Young Hollywood Dream

RJ here. Now you know we made our home at the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. It's where we have the Young Hollywood Studio. We've now been here for a couple years. But what you might not know that these two people next to me, RC and Beverly Cohen, are the owners of the property here. And they're the one that made the dream possible. They did a $38 million renovation a few years ago. We approached them with the idea of saying, "Hey, can we build a broadcast studio?" And you said, "Yeah." We're celebrating 25 fabulous years. Wow! Today.

Fabulous.

Well, not all fabulous.

Yeah. Couple earthquakes, stuff like that. But other than that they've been fabulous.

So take us through 25 years ago how how you had the idea and said, "I'm going to take this block and I'm going to build a Four Seasons Hotel." You got a flower shop here at the corner which was the property. And then you bought the whole block and now it's a hotel.

Yeah, my brother, Joe, called me and he said, "The owners of the property said, 'I got to move off because they're going to sell the property.'" And I said, "Don't sell it, don't sell it. I'll bring my brother, we'll sit down, we want to buy it." We've always had the dream to build a hotel. To own a hotel. And we thought, "My goodness, if we could own a hotel on this site, unreal."

So Beverly, when when he first came to you and he said, "Honey, I think we should buy the block and build the hotel." What did you say?

I couldn't believe it. I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Oh, yeah. It's going to make we're going to make it." Well, his dream came true. And here we are today, 25 years later, sitting on top of the hotel interviewing with you. You know, we've had a lot of great things happen in the 25 years. And the one of the highlights, RJ, was when you came in and wanted to open up your studio here. And it was uh you know, we hesitated a little bit, but you're so energetic. You you feel so sure and positive of yourself. Uh absolute. And you did such a beautiful, beautiful job.

It's been an amazing partnership. I mean, it's crazy. Two and a half years later, here we are now and you know, thousands of celebrities have been through our studio. And now we have two more celebrities that we can add. Now, it's now it's 2002 that we've interviewed for Young Hollywood. Yeah. Amazing. Who's been someone that you've seen in the hotel that just wowed you? Because every day there's somebody, but has ever been one you're like?

Well, we are very dear friends with Lionel Richie. I mean, it's just been amazing, uh the feeling to us of all the celebrities that they feel this is their home. And this is for us a blessing. I mean, we're feel we feel like we are family to anyone and especially the stars. And our staff goes way beyond, way beyond to make sure that everything all their needs are taken care of. So we try. And if they don't, if we whip them. Oh.

And it's unusual too because people might not realize you actually live here at the hotel. I mean, the penthouse is your residence. Yeah. What what's that like? What what are some of your favorite things about living here?

Uh well, all of my our employees are our family. Right. And when you live here, you wake up with them, and you are with them all day. 25 employees have been with us for 25 years. Incredible. And I opened my home, my penthouse, to our employees to all of them. We have to talk about your unbelievable general manager, Medhi Eftekari. He has now been with us for over seven years. And it's truly been one of the biggest blessings. He's such a great guy. He's so personable. The guests love him. The actors fall in love with him. You can tell that we have a a large passion for this hotel.

Speaking of which, we have to talk about a passion. All the lovely flowers that are that are here around us. We know that's a a passion point for you that you're actually sometimes out here in the garden and you're clipping the flowers away. Tell us a little about.

Quite often, actually, quite often.

He's in this garden more than he is upstairs.

Yeah. This is uh this is uh a great getaway for me. We like to mix it up and put it together and change it and make it cool. So you see all these wonderful pots of succulents around the hotel. The garden up here at the at the uh poolside restaurant. And the centerpiece, of course, in the lobby. Which tell there's a little interesting fact about that too, in your centerpiece. You know, we started with that from day one. And we never have changed. We've gone through all the bad times, recessions, occupancy goes way down, everybody's cutting back. Flowers, plants, the ambiance, we never touched.

Well there you go. Now that's the ultimate fairytale lifestyle of 25 years of just one one dream, one fantasy after another. Bob and Beverly Cohen, owners of the Four Seasons, thank you for for making this our home.