THE Wendy Rushwife of Stockton Rush, its managing director OceanGate, owner of the Titan submarine, who disappeared on Sunday during a dive at Titanic wreckis a descendant of two first-class passengers who died when the ocean liner sank in 1912, the New York Times reports.

Wendy Rush is the great-granddaughter of retail magnate Isidore Strauss and his wife, Ida, two of the wealthiest people aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage. Isidore Strauss, born in 1845, was a co-owner of Macy’s department store.

Rush, born Wendy Hollings Vale, married Stockton Rush in 1986. Her LinkedIn page states that has participated in three OceanGate dive missions on the Titanic wreck the last two years, like, also, that she is the company’s communications director and a long-time board member of the OceanGate Charitable Foundation.

Wendy Rush’s Titanic ancestors are perhaps best known for their tragic love story. Survivors of the disaster recall seeing Isidore Strauss refusing to sit in a lifeboat when women and children were still waiting to leave the sinking ship. Ida Strauss, his wife of four decades, refused to leave her husband Mrand the two were seen standing hand-in-hand on the deck of the Titanic as the ship sank