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Nevada Hayes Stoody was born 21 October 1885 (some sources say as early as 1870 which seems more likely) in Ohio, the second child of Jacob Walter Stoody (1846-1922) and Nancy Miranda McNeel Stoody (1848-1922) who married in 1867. She died 11 January 1941. Her origins were never clear, but she came from a small town in Ohio to New York City before 1906.

Her first husband, Lee Agnew, was New York representative of the old Record-Herald. They were divorced in Manhattan and he later invented a device for delivering folded newspapers from presses - an invention which made him very wealthy. When he died 31 January 1924, he left her the excess income from his estate over that which was necessary for the support of their son, Lee "David" Agnew, Jr. The excess was substantial. A day after her divorce from Lee Agnew, Sr., in 1906, she married William Henry Chapman who was then in his seventies. When he left her more than $8 million at his death one year later, the newspapers dubbed her "the $10 million widow."

She immediately went to Europe where it was reported that those vying for her hand included Lord Falconer (later the 10th Earl of Kintore who married American heiress Helen Zimmerman, formerly Duchess of Manchester), Count A. F. Chereff-Spiritovitch (a younger officer in the army of the Tsar), Prince Mohammed Ali Hassan, and Count Aubert de Sonies who came from Paris to New York on the same ship with the widow. While the Count was in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel waiting to present flowers and a proposal of marriage, she departed by a rear exit with Philip Van Valkenburgh, a prominent member of an old New York family. They were married in Connecticut on 23 November 1909 and were divorced after a short time amid protracted legal battles; she finally settled $200,000 upon him in 1910.

She immediately left for Europe where the press continued to report those seeking her hand in marriage. Nevada married morganatically in Rome 26 September and in Madrid 23 November 1917, Don Alfonso of Portugal, Prince of Braganza, Duke of Oporto, born Ajuda 1 July 1865, died Naples 21 February 1920, son of King Luis I. He forfeited his inheritance rights to the throne by his marriage and his financial allowance from the royal family was cut.

Nevada styled herself as the Crown Princess of Portugal. Her husband was the uncle of King Manuel of Portugal and only brother of King Manuel's father, the murdered King Carlos. King Victor Emanuel, a cousin of the Duke of Oporto, gave him asylum in the Royal Palace in Naples and a reported allowance of $10,000 per year. The Duke of Oporto died in Naples in 1920 having fled there after the Portugese Revolution. After the death of the King of Portugal Nevada petitioned the republican government – to no avail - to grant her all the royal family’s funds as she considered herself its senior member.

She sailed to the U. S. in 1921 to have made a silver casket on a bronze base (weighing half a ton) in which to convey her late husband’s body from Naples to Lisbon. There it would be displayed in the Pantheon before the Duke of Oporto was buried next to his murdered brother, the late King. In 1935 the Duchess of Oporto traveled on the Ile de France to New York where she reported that, having spent two months in Germany, she was "greatly impressed by Adolf Hitler."

She jealously guarded what she perceived as her rights as Crown Princess and once, on a trans-Atlantic cruise which also included the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, to ensure that she be seated on the Captain’s right at dinner rather than the Grand Duchess, she entered the dining room ahead of all other guests to take her seat. She died 11 January 1941 in Tampa, Florida, at St. Joseph's Hospital after an illness of 10 days. She had spent the winter in Tampa for the preceding 10 years. She left a son, David Agnew, of New York, and four sisters.