JFK Jr.'s Wife Made Her Own Mark
By BETH GARDINER, AP
NEW YORK (AP), Carolyn Bessette Kennedy
was born to privilege and glamour, the beautiful daughter of a Greenwich, Conn.,
doctor. That was nothing compared to life in the Kennedy clan. An instant
tabloid favorite after she married John F. Kennedy Jr., Bessette Kennedy was tailed by
paparazzi, gossiped about by columnists and compared to her husband's late mother,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The former Calvin Klein publicist, 33, joined her husband in the jet-set life he
knew from birth, honeymoon in Turkey and the Greek islands, dinner at the White House,
and, on Friday, a private flight to a Cape Cod wedding.
She wed Kennedy in September, 1996, on Cumberland Island along the Georgia
coast, in a ceremony so secret that even some family members weren't invited.
Bessette Kennedy's high-school classmates had dubbed her ``The Ultimate
Beautiful Person.''
She was so stunning, reports had it, that she landed a job at a Calvin Klein
shop in Boston just by walking down the street. Klein himself later hired her to
work as a publicist in his New York office.
The Daily News dubbed her ``Camelot's New Queen'' and some observers said her
grace and elegance put her in a class with Mrs. Onassis.
``She is one of those mysterious creatures that understands, on some deep level,
mystical femininity,'' JFK Jr.'s friend John Perry Barlow gushed to New York magazine.
``She is very good at making people feel they are special and important, and
largely because she means it. It was the same thing with Jackie.''
But life in the spotlight brought pressures as well as privilege.
Paparazzi photographed Kennedy and his bride-to-be arguing in Central Park in
February 1996, he reportedly pulled a ring off her finger, and a television newsmagazine
aired a videotape of the fight.
Kennedy asked paparazzi to give the couple some privacy after their wedding, but
few heeded his pleas. He lashed out at one photographer after a group of paparazzi refused
to leave the couple alone as they walked their dog near their Tribeca apartment. And
speculation about a new Kennedy heir was endless. Every time Bessette Kennedy gained an
ounce, it seemed, the tabloids had her pregnant.
The willowy blond was raised in wealthy Greenwich, Conn., the daughter of a
physician. She majored in elementary education at Boston University, but took a marketing
job with a nightclub consortium after graduation.
She eventually moved to New York to work for Klein. Gossip columnists had lots
of theories about how she met her future husband.
Some said the two first talked as she helped him buy Calvin Klein suits; others
said he contacted her after he saw her jogging in a park.
However it happened, she'd soon replaced actress Daryl Hannah on JFK Jr.'s arm.
Robert DiMarzo, a photographer who said he became friends with Bessette Kennedy
when she lived in Boston, feared the worst Saturday as searchers looked for the small
plane she, her husband and her sister Lauren were in. Another sister, Lisa, was not on
board.
``It's a tragedy,'' he said. ``Everybody's calling me, saying the same thing.
'Why did it have to happen to them?'''
