THE PRIVATE CAROLYN BESSETTE KENNEDY
Friends and family open up about JFK Jr’s wife.
When Carolyn Bessette was proposed to by the world’s most eligible bachelor, John F. Kennedy Jr, she did what many would consider unthinkable: she kept him waiting. For weeks beforehand, John had stowed the diamond-and-sapphire ring—inspired by one owned by his late mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—in a pharmacy bag at the New York office of his magazine, George. Then during a July weekend on Martha’s Vineyard in 1995, the 34-year-old son of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie took Carolyn fishing. “He went into this thing about how everything’s better with a partner, not just fishing but life,” says his former assistant Rosemarie Terenzio. “He said, ‘I want you to be my partner.’ ” But the 29-year-old fashion
publicist wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge. “It was like, ‘I don’t know when I want to do this—i’m a little nervous,’ ” Terenzio says of Carolyn’s response. Recalls a close friend of John’s: “She held off the proposal for about three weeks. I think it made him all the more intent on marrying her.”
Shrewd, independent and impossibly stylish, the 1.77m Carolyn was nobody’s pushover—and John loved her for it. “He was a guy who could never stand to be bored, and with her he was never bored,” says the close friend.
Now, 18 years after the couple died in a plane crash with John in the pilot’s seat on July 16, 1999, their romance continues to intrigue— and in new interviews with WHO, friends are speaking in depth about the complex woman who both adored and challenged America’s heir to Camelot. “If someone was going to steal our prince,” says John’s good friend John Perry Barlow, “the press and public
wanted her to be some kind of unblemished princess.” But Carolyn was different. “She was quirky and imaginative,” says Barlow. “She was her own self. The woman everyone has read about is not at all as she was in real life.”
The youngest of three daughters of William, an architectural engineer, and Ann, a teacher and administrator—they divorced when she was young—the Connecticut-raised Carolyn was working for Calvin Klein when she met John, then preparing to launch his politics and lifestyle magazine George. She was “a very warm person who loved to tease,” says her Boston University friend Colleen Curtis. “My memories are of us sitting on the couch, watching General Hospital at 3 o’clock and eating candy bars.” Even then, however, her stunning beauty stood out. “I remember hearing a bunch of guys talking at a party and saying, ‘Are you really having a conversation about the first time you saw Carolyn?’ ” recalls Curtis. “And they were. Because they’d never seen anyone that beautiful before.”
John, too, fell under her spell—and appreciated her “street smarts,” says George creative director Matt Berman. “You just got the feeling that she was not gonna be fooled. He liked her brazenness.” But the couple’s fiery passion could also lead to arguments, including one in New York’s Central Park in 1996 that was famously caught on tape. “They would love hard, and they would fight hard,” says Ariel Paredes, the granddaughter of Jackie’s former assistant Providencia Paredes, whom Carolyn befriended.
The pair pulled off a surprise wedding on Georgia’s Cumberland Island on Sept. 21, 1996, but their newlywed joy soon turned to strain when they returned to their Manhattan apartment. John declined security for either of them, insisting as he always had that such tactics only increased unwanted attention. “John wasn’t sensitive to the fact that this had been his life since he was born,” says Terenzio, “but it was not Carolyn’s.”
Carolyn, meanwhile, grew increasingly uneasy—especially in the wake of Princess Diana’s death following a paparazzi car chase in 1997. (John had met with Diana at New York’s Carlyle Hotel in 1995 in an attempt to persuade her to appear on the cover of George; she politely declined. He later said she had “great legs,” says Berman.) “Carolyn was rattled by the fact that she and John were just as vulnerable,” says Terenzio. The day of Diana’s funeral, “John said, ‘Tell Carolyn how my mom handled photographers,’ ” recalls Kathy Mckeon, who had worked as an assistant and nanny for Jackie after JFK’S death. “I said, ‘She was nice to them—she smiled and gave them one good picture.’ He said, ‘Carolyn, did you get that? You’re treating them all wrong.’ She said, ‘I hate those bastards.’ ”
There were other stresses. Several friends say John was eager to have children, while Carolyn felt strongly that their paparazzi-
“You just got the feeling she was not gonna be fooled”
—Matt Berman
magnet apartment was not the place to start a family. Meanwhile, John’s sister, Caroline, then a mother of three young kids with her husband, Ed Schlossberg, didn’t bond with Carolyn—“they had different lifestyles,” says a close source—and George was struggling financially. Most devastating of all, John’s maternal cousin and best friend Anthony Radziwill was dying of cancer. Amid everything, the tabloid press kicked rumours of marital discord into high gear. “To say their marriage was on the rocks is just inaccurate,” says Anthony’s widow, Carole. “Anthony’s impending death was a strain on their marriage, no doubt. It was a difficult time for all of us.” In turn, the couple sought counselling. “It was just a period of chaos,” says Terenzio.
They spent their last night apart, with John staying uptown at the Stanhope Hotel. It was Terenzio who encouraged Carolyn to attend the wedding of John’s cousin Rory Kennedy in Hyannis Port on July 17, 1999. “I said, ‘ You have to go—this is a family wedding,’ ” she recalls. John, a licensed pilot, opted to fly the plane himself, carrying both Carolyn and her older sister Lauren, 34. Just an hour after they took off from New Jersey, air-traffic controllers lost contact with the plane. Carole Radziwill got the first call and rang the Coast Guard around 2.30 AM. “Once I said that out loud to the Coast Guard and made the missingpersons report, I knew that this was a real thing,” she recalls. “That was a heartbreaking moment.” Soon after, she spoke to John’s uncle the late Senator Ted Kennedy. “He said, ‘Let’s take it step-by-step.’ He had the same tone that I had three hours earlier. I felt envious of him at that moment, because he was at the beginning, when you could still believe things would end differently.”
Tragically, it ended with the deaths of three people. Friends say John was pondering his political future—including a possible run for governor of New York—while the Bessette family lost two daughters. “Carolyn’s mother and their family held themselves with grace and dignity in the face of unimaginable horror,” says Carole, whose husband, Anthony, died just three weeks later at age 40. “It was a tragedy of epic proportion, and it played out on the public stage.” (A source says Carolyn and Lauren’s mother, Ann, later moved to a house nearer the water—where, she explained, “I feel closer to the kids.”)
Nearly two decades after their deaths, those closest to John and Carolyn say they still feel the void. “They loved each other—carolyn was quite a lovable person,” says Carole. “She was clever, she was naughty, and she had that balance of being able to be really serious and deep yet funny. I could talk to her about cancer in the hospital room, and then the next minute we’re off to the mall ... She was a great girlfriend. I still miss her after all these years.”