By Laura Collins, lead investigative reporter for DailyMail.com
They say blondes have more fun, but as these exclusive photos show, Dana Blumberg had a great time during her days as a red-haired medical student in Missouri†
Today she is a blond man from Manhattan, an esteemed ophthalmologist, and the future Mrs. Robert Kraft with a ten-carat stone on her finger.
In an exclusive conversation with DailyMail.com, Blumberg’s father, Nathan Blumberg, confirmed the engagement, saying, “She’s very happy. I’ve met [Kraft] many times and he is a wonderful man.’
“He treats her like a princess and I’m just really happy they found each other,” he added.
Dana Blumberg was known by her peers as a “super friendly and super cute” redhead when she was a medical student in Missouri, DailyMail.com can reveal
Billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, 80, and New York-based ophthalmologist, 48, were revealed to be engaged last week. Kraft has been reported to propose with a huge ring estimated to be “10 carats or more,” with one source comparing it to his Super Bowl rings (which Blumberg models in 2017, before they started dating)
At 87, Nathan Blumberg is only six years older than Kraft, who will turn 81 in June. But he said he’s not worried about the 33-year age difference between Kraft and his daughter, describing them as “like a pair of young lovebirds.”
They kept their engagement a secret until Kraft’s designer boyfriend Tommy Hilfiger, 70, let it slip two weeks ago at the inaugural amfAR Gala Palm Beach event.
Blumberg is one of the top ophthalmologists in the US and she is based at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is pictured in 2012
Blumberg and Kraft were both chairmen of the event Hilfiger had the honor of.
Blumberg, 48, was first spotted with the Patriots’ owner — who has a net worth of $8.3 billion — at an event for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 2017, but they didn’t begin dating until 2019.
It’s all a high-octane and glamorous world away from Blumberg’s time at St. Louis University School of Medicine, where, according to one Blumberg graduate, “every big test deserved a furious feast.”
The former student remembered Blumberg as a popular class member who was “super nice, super friendly and super fun.”
Pictured in the 2000 yearbook class, Blumberg can be seen smiling and holding a red solo cup in his hand.
Standing next to friend and fellow medic Layla Ziace, they’re on a page titled “Thank God it’s Friday – Work Hard…Play Harder.”
Yearbook photos obtained by DailyMail.com of the St. Louis University School of Medicine class of 2000 show that Blumberg knew how to enjoy herself during her days as a red-haired medical student
Pictured next to friend and fellow medic Layla Ziace (left), Blumberg can be seen smiling and clutching a red solo cup
A former student remembered Blumberg as a popular class member who was “super nice, super friendly and super fun”
Elsewhere, she can be seen sipping pitchers of cocktails at the popular student haunt, Wild Flower bar and restaurant.
Right there, amid pages of social events and parties, Blumberg is playfully sticking her tongue out at the camera in one shot and sucking an adult drink from a baby bottle in another.
The photo bears the caption, “Dana works through a number of juvenile cases.”
In one image, she hugs her fellow student, Avi Gururaja, as she leans against him as they enjoy a drink at Cat’s Meow, a downtown bar known as “the Cat” by the students and which to this day today has ‘cheap prices’.
Ten minutes from the university campus, the popular bar still caters to the student population, hosting “the Cat’s Meow Trifecta” — three shots for $6 — and hosting Mardi Gras and St Patrick’s Day parties.
Blumberg attended Brown University, where she majored in biology and graduated with a BA in 1995 before going to St. Louis.
She graduated from medical school in May 2000, leaving her life of plastic cups and parties behind and moving to Ohio, where she completed her residency at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland in 2004.
Another photo published on pages of college social events and parties shows Blumberg playfully sucking an adult drink from a baby bottle.
Blumberg poses with fellow medical students in a group photo
Blumberg followed in the footsteps of her father, also a doctor, who confirmed the couple’s engagement to DailyMail.com
After graduating from medical school in May 2000, Blumberg moved to Ohio, where she completed her residency at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland in 2004.
She completed her fellowship specializing in glaucoma at the Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins University and practiced medicine in Baltimore and DC before returning to her hometown of New York.
During a distinguished career, she has published numerous research papers, served as an assistant professor at Columbia University, and built a reputation as one of the top ophthalmologists in the country.
Blumberg has built a reputation as one of the best ophthalmologists in the country
In 2006 she received the Teaching Award from the Wilmer Eye Institute. In 2009, she won an American Glaucoma Society’s Clinician Scientist Award. And in 2013, while in the Department of Ophthalmology at Columbia University, she was named in the list of Super Doctors Rising Stars.
The select honor means that Blumberg has been nominated by fellow physicians as a physician they would choose when seeking medical care.
That same year, she won a prestigious grant to fund her research into a glaucoma screening tool called Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).
At the time, Blumberg said, “We think of an undiagnosed disease as something that happens in developing countries, not here in the United States.
“In medical school we are trained to be clinicians and to think about patients on an individual level, but we are not taught about public health as a whole.”
She previously worked on disease detection screening strategies, which can help reduce vision loss due to glaucoma. She will be in the picture with Kraft in 2021
Going public: Kraft was spotted holding hands with Blumberg at the French Open in June 2019
Kraft was married to Myra Hiatt (left) from 1963 until her death from cancer in 2011. The couple have four sons, at least one of whom is older than Dr. Blumberg. He later dated actress Ricki Noel Lander (right) now 42, for six years from 2012
At the time, Columbia posted about their pride in Blumberg, but her biography has since been taken off the website.
Blumberg has never been married before.
For his part, Kraft was married to high school sweetheart Myra for 48 years before she died of ovarian cancer in July 2011. She was just 68 years old.
A year later, Kraft began dating actress Ricki Lander. The couple broke up in 2018.
When DailyMail.com contacted Lander, her father answered the call, describing his daughter as “a very private person” who “had no need to comment.”
Blumberg’s delighted father told DailyMail.com that the couple has not yet set a date for the wedding.