Former CEO of Conde Nast

Steven T. Florio, 58, a hard-driving executive who worked his way up the publishing ladder to lead the Conde Nast magazine empire, died Thursday at New York Presbyterian Hospital- Columbia of complications from an earlier heart attack, said Maurie Perl, a spokeswoman for Conde Nast Publications.

Florio was president and chief executive of Conde Nast through 2004, expanding it into the second-biggest magazine publisher in the country, behind Time Inc., while many others were cutting staff and costs.

He managed 16 magazines aimed at the affluent, selling advertising that appealed to their luxury tastes and reaching more than 70 million readers a month.

Under his tenure, Conde Nast included Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Glamour, Architectural Digest, Self, GQ, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Conde Nast Traveler, Allure, Wired, Lucky and Teen Vogue.

New Yorker Editor David Remnick said Florio was “remarkably effective” in using his big, warm personality to achieve his goals. “Steve was the antithesis of a business-school-minted android,” Remnick said.

Born in the New York borough of Queens in 1949, Florio graduated from New York University with a business degree in 1971.

“I was not short on nerve or ego, and I carried a heavy chip on my shoulder,” Florio wrote in a 2005 proposal for an autobiography that he decided not to publish. “They’ll bury me with it too. I was there to get the job done.”

He started his career at Esquire, then became publisher of GQ. Florio was named president of the New Yorker in 1985, when the magazine was purchased by Advance Publications, the Conde Nast parent company owned by the Newhouse family.