If that's not enough to knock you off your six-inch stilettos, consider that 700 of Shak's shoes are Christian Louboutins. He's the man behind one of her favorite pairs, $4,000-plus rose-gold heels with spiky straps and Swarovski crystals that only she, Victoria Beckham, and 10 other people own.
"Every time I wear them, I have people who try to take them off my feet," she said with an impish smile.
And though the petite, girlish Shak looks nothing like Beyoncé, ankles down she could pass for the superstar's twin when they wear their matching pairs of French black-lace Louboutins with gold Swarovski crystals.
Shak, 43, is standing in her sitting room-turned-shoe closet, which houses the cream of the crop: the Louboutins, the Steigers, the Blahniks, the YSLs. There are three other closets stuffed with older models or those of a lesser provenance.
Today, she is wearing scarlet suede strappy Louboutins to match a simple red dress, which serves to highlight the fabulous footwear. She spent the day with a film crew from Today in her house and even dashed off to Saks Fifth Avenue so they could shoot her buying - what else? - a pair of shoes.
Despite the attention that comes with being a poker pro and shoe hoarder, not to mention a one-time contestant on Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker, Shak considers herself "just a mom of three kids who lives in Bryn Mawr," even if the kids tell her, rightly, that she's not the average Main Line soccer mom.
Though Shak has loved shoes since she was a little girl, she began seriously collecting in her 20s and concedes that her shoe-buying binge was an easy, if expensive, pick-me-up during some rocky times.
"I was filling a void in my life. It turned into love/obsession," said Shak, who grew up in Elkins Park and is divorced from an oil-futures trader who is a world-class poker player himself. "Now I'm in a better place, I buy less."
