Black Tie Affair was brought to the United States, where he was kept as a yearling at Cynthia and Walter Reese's Timber Creek Farm in New Jersey.

Reese trained the colt as a 2-year-old for Edward P. Sawyer of Hudson River Farm before Black Tie Affair was sold to Jeffrey Sullivan in 1989 for $125,000 as a three-year-old on the advice of trainer Ernie T. Poulos.

Black Tie Affair was a graded stakes race winner at two, three, four, and five and earned United States Horse of the Year in 1991 along with winning the Breeders' Cup Classic that year at Churchill Downs in a wire-to-wire victory over Twilight Agenda and Unbridled with Jerry Bailey aboard.

Instead, with the help of several people, from turf enthusiasts to prominent businessmen, Black Tie Affair's ex-trainer's wife, Dee Poulos, started a campaign to bring him back to the United States.

[1] His best-known progeny are Evening Attire, Formal Gold, and the multiple stakes-winning filly License Fee, along with the Japanese winners Washington Color and Today's Affair.