Million-Dollar Magic: How Steve Cohen Fools the Rich

Translation: No, he can't actually read minds. But Cohen, who was a psychology major in college, certainly creates the illusion that he can.

For his signature "Think-a-Drink" trick, which originated more than a century ago and was popular in the vaudevillian era, each audience member is told to write a favorite drink on an index card and fold it in half. The cards are swapped among people sitting nearby, then passed to audience members at the end of the rows for collection. Cohen asks someone in the crowd to choose one and read the drink written there.

"A martini," said one man during a recent show.

"What kind?" asked Cohen, a bemused look on his face.

"Vodka!" the spectator answered.

Cohen went over to a silver tray and picked up a gleaming tea kettle, making a spectacle of swirling it around. He then poured a clear liquid into a little glass and asked the man who read the card to taste it.

"Is that, in fact, a vodka martini?" Cohen asked.

"It is," the incredulous guest replied.

The trick was repeated for each drink subsequently chosen that evening: a margarita, a cosmopolitan, blue Gatorade and chocolate milk. The crowd was in awe.

"The magic I pick doesn't appear to be sleight-of-hand tricks," Cohen explained. "Every good magic trick has to have one moment where you're at the cusp of saying, 'No, it can't be,' and then seeing it come true."

The only time Cohen's kettle couldn't honor a drink request was when someone once asked for Pepto-Bismol.

"I can't pour medicine," he told The New York Times.

Cohen does 250 shows a year at a luxury suite at the Waldorf -- "my living room," he calls it -- charging patrons $75 a ticket, $100 for the front row. He requires them to dress in cocktail attire, and he wears a crisp three-piece suit to help create an atmosphere of class and sophistication. The audience tops out at around 50 for each hour-and-a-half-long sitting. Once a month, he holds exclusive $250-a-person midnight shows for a small group of around 20.

Though he has done his act about 3,000 times for the past decade or so, his name recognition has picked up considerably in recent years. He routinely sells out every performance and has landed himself a bit of a cult following. The wealthy love him. The feeling is mutual.

Because Cohen grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Westchester County, New York, practicing his magic tricks for well-to-do family friends as a little boy, he decided to make that his trademark. Or rather, his manager, Mark Levy, told him to make that his trademark. Marketing his show under its name, Chamber Magic, wasn't doing the trick.

The gimmick worked like a charm. Once he billed himself as the "Millionaires' Magician," Cohen couldn't sell tickets fast enough. He's now in the same league as many of his guests, earning a million-dollar annual salary.

"It was the packaging that was limiting me," he says. "I got used to performing around wealth. I'm comfortable around wealth. So I focused on that area."

The set-up for his show, held in the private suite where Cohen lives most of the year with his wife and two young children ("they're in the back sleeping right now"), takes about as long as the performance itself. The audience sees little of the wizardry behind the tricks. And like any good magician, Cohen is tight-lipped about how he does them.

"I can't share them without giving away trade secrets," he says.

In one, he makes cards chosen by the audience rise from within a deck encased in glass. He says he has help from the ghost of a former hotel employee named Oscar.

For another, he asks everyone in the audience to write down a U.S. city. One recent guest was summoned up front, where she was told to scribble her choice on a notepad and put the pad face-down on a desk. Cohen then took a map and ripped sections off until he was left with only the state of Wyoming. He pierced the dot next to Jackson Hole with a pen.

"What is the name of your city?" the Millionaires' Magician asked.

"Jackson Hole," the stunned woman said, shaking her head in disbelief.

In a similar routine, Cohen tells the group to jot down odd facts about themselves. He then goes around the room, seemingly at random, and manages to recount those anecdotes to the people they happened to.

"I'm seeing the word 'anise' -- no, 'casino,'" he told one woman. "An incident with a ball. Does that ring a bell?"

"Yes," she replied. "I got hit in the head with a roulette ball at a casino."

At one stage, Cohen toyed with Siegfried, who was watching him and looking skeptical as he did a series of tricks with coins and a top hat.

"This man is thinking, 'I wouldn't be impressed if a brick were under that hat,'" Cohen joked. He lifted the hat, and there was a brick, sitting in the space that had been empty moments earlier. The audience gasped.

Cohen occasionally makes mistakes -- in his opening card trick, he guessed the suit as hearts when it was actually diamonds. Presumably, those flubs are intentional, adding to his authenticity and trustworthiness as a magician.

For his grand finale, Cohen has members of the audience gather around him at the front of the room, with two people shuffling two separate decks of cards. With one last flourish, he flips over the cards from each deck simultaneously, with every card from one matching every card from the other in perfect order.

Good showmen, says Cohen, are adept at winning audiences over and leaving them wanting more.

"First they knock you over the head, then they tie you in a knot," he says. "Just when you're at the ferverous peak, they say the show's over."

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