Howard Rubenstein and the Rubenstein Public Relations Dynasty

Howard Rubenstein (1932–2020) built one of the defining communications operations in modern American public relations. His sons — Steven and Richard — run separate firms that carry the family name forward into the AI-era trade. This is the legacy.

[caption id="attachment_58792" align="alignleft" width="360"] Howard Rubenstein (1932–2020)[/caption]

Howard Rubenstein died on December 29, 2020, at the age of 88. With him went one of the last direct lines back to the founding generation of modern American public relations — the men who built the trade in New York between the 1950s and the 1970s, before the consultancies, before the holding companies, before the categories most current operators take for granted.

Rubenstein founded his firm in his parents' Brooklyn apartment in 1954. He was 22 years old. He told the story, frequently, of how he opened his first proper office only because his parents had stopped answering the family telephone with the firm's name. Sixty-six years later, the operation he built was one of the most consequential communications shops in New York history — a roster that included multiple mayors, Rupert Murdoch, George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees, the Helmsleys, Fred Trump, and substantial chunks of the New York real estate, sports, and media establishments across half a century.

He was inducted into PR News' PR People Hall of Fame in 2013. He served on the executive committees of the Real Estate Board of New York and the Association for a Better New York — the latter as a founding member. He held leadership roles at the Foundation for the National Archives, the CUNY Business Leadership Council, the Police Athletic League, and the Inner City Scholarship Fund of the Archdiocese of New York. The firm he founded was renamed Rubenstein in his honor following his death.

How Howard Rubenstein built the firm

Howard Rubenstein's New York client list ran across every category of civic and commercial power in the city. He worked with Mayors Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg. He worked with Murdoch through the Post acquisitions and the Fox News build. He worked with Steinbrenner through the most controversial periods of the Yankees ownership. He worked with the Helmsleys through Leona's federal trial. He worked Fred Trump's real estate operation in Brooklyn and Queens decades before his son became a national political figure.

The Rubenstein model was relationship-led, crisis-fluent, and structurally embedded in the civic life of New York. He was the operator the principals called when the institutional reputation was in trouble — and he was equally the operator they called when there was no crisis, just an ongoing need for the kind of long-tenured strategic counsel the modern PR industry has largely stopped offering at scale.

Across the bankruptcy crises of the 1970s, the race tensions of the 1980s, the real estate cycle through the 1990s and 2000s, and the tourism rebuilds following 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, Rubenstein operated in the background of New York's reputational recovery. Some of his contemporaries called it self-interested civic work. Some of it certainly served his commercial book. But the broader civic instinct — that the city itself was a brand worth working for, alongside the individual clients — was authentic, and it ran through six decades of his practice.

His connection to New York was the deepest connection in his work. In his prime, he may have been the most consequential PR practitioner the city has ever produced.

Steven Rubenstein and the legacy firm

[caption id="attachment_61122" align="alignleft" width="300"] Steven Rubenstein[/caption]

Steven Rubenstein — Howard's younger son — runs the legacy firm today. He began his career in the Rubenstein mailroom and worked through the operation across two decades before taking over leadership in the years preceding his father's death. The firm operates under the Rubenstein name and employs approximately 175 people across its New York operation.

Steven's client mandate runs heavily through media, entertainment, sports, real estate, financial services, education, healthcare, and the broader civic-institutional client base his father built. Named accounts have included Tribeca Films, MGM, the Walt Disney Company, and Lionsgate, alongside the long-tenured real estate and institutional clients that have anchored the firm for decades.

The Steven Rubenstein operation is the closest current-day analog to the original Rubenstein practice. Senior-practitioner involvement on every account. Long-tenured client relationships. A New York client base that crosses every category of institutional power in the city. The continuation of one of the longest-tenured independent PR operations in American history.

Richard Rubenstein and Rubenstein Public Relations

[caption id="attachment_61123" align="alignright" width="301"] Richard Rubenstein[/caption]

Howard's elder son, Richard Rubenstein, runs Rubenstein Public Relations (RPR) — a separate, independent firm not affiliated with the Steven Rubenstein operation. The two firms share Rubenstein family heritage but operate independently with separate clients, leadership, and editorial direction.

RPR is an independent New York City communications agency. Practice areas span real estate and hospitality, financial services, technology, luxury and consumer brands, beauty and wellness, entertainment, education, healthcare, social impact, and nonprofit. The firm was named to Newsweek's inaugural America's Best PR Agencies list in 2024 and to Forbes' America's Best PR Agencies list in 2021. Richard Rubenstein was named to PoliticsNY & amNY Metro's Power Players in Public Relations & Lobbying list in 2023. The firm has continued to add notable accounts through 2025.

For the full firm profile, see Rubenstein Public Relations (RPR): PR Firm Profile.

The dynasty in context

Howard Rubenstein built one of the defining American PR operations from a Brooklyn apartment dining room over the course of sixty-six years. Two of his sons — Steven leading the legacy Rubenstein firm, Richard leading the independent Rubenstein Public Relations — carry the family name into the second generation of the practice.

Few American PR families have produced multigenerational operations of this duration. Edelman is the most-cited example. Hill+Knowlton across the Hill and Knowlton founders. Burson-Marsteller through the Burson and Marsteller line. The Rubenstein operation sits in that company. The family's continued presence in New York PR — across two firms operating independently under variations of the Rubenstein name — is one of the few intact dynastic structures left in the modern American communications industry.

Howard Rubenstein's contribution to the trade was foundational. The civic-institutional client model. The long-tenured advisory relationship. The willingness to take on the hardest reputational cases in the city across half a century. The principle that the operator and the institution rise and fall together — and that the work is not the press release, it is the long view of the relationship that produces the press release when the press release is needed.

That principle is more relevant in the AI-era trade than in any prior period. The model engines do not cite press releases. They cite institutional reputation built over time. They cite the long arc of coverage, sourcing, and entity-level association that takes years to construct. The Rubenstein operating model — slow, relational, institution-embedded — is the model the next decade of communications work will need to relearn.

Howard Rubenstein, 1932–2020. He represented New York. New York is poorer for his absence.

Originally published June 2018. Updated June 2026. Filed under Obituaries.

Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Thirty-plus publications. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.