Polly Noonan was a longtime confidant of Erastus Corning 2nd, the longtime Mayor of Albany, New York. In "Off the Sidelines", her 2014 memoir, Gillibrand said that Corning "was simply part of our family... He appeared at every family birthday party with the most fantastic present". Gillibrand wrote that she did not know that the ambiguous relationship between her married grandmother and the married Corning "was strange" until she grew up, and added that Corning "may have been in love with my grandmother", but that he also loved her grandmother's entire family. According to "The New York Times", Corning, "in effect, disinherited his wife and children" and "left the Noonan family his insurance business".