TV & Movies
JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’s Relationship Timeline Is A Headline-Making Love Story
From their meet-cute to tragic end, here’s a look back at the pair’s storied romance.
Each episode of FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette begins with a disclaimer, noting that the show is inspired by actual events, but fictionalizes certain elements for “dramatic purposes.”
Indeed, there’s no way to know exactly what the headline-making pair’s private conversations entailed. As creator Connor Hines told The Hollywood Reporter, “Obviously, their lives were cut short. But I was almost exclusively drawn to the dynamics of the marriage more than anything else, and to handle what everybody knows inevitably does happen with as much grace and sensitivity as possible.”
If you want to know the key moments in Kennedy and Bessette’s relationship timeline as you watch Love Story, here’s a quick refresher.
1991/1992: Their First Meeting
As Hines recently acknowledged to Glamour, there are various accounts of how Kennedy and Bessette first met. In JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography, RoseMarie Terenzio — Kennedy’s former assistant — relayed the story that the pair met in 1991, when Bessette assisted Kennedy with suits at Calvin Klein. A peer, the late Paul Eckstein, said Kennedy spotted Bessette at a party and asked for an introduction.
“After everything that I read of all the books, it made the most logical sense to me that I do believe that they met at a party and that they were introduced, and that that obviously would’ve engendered an opportunity for him to come into the Calvin Klein office and follow up with her,” Hines said. (The show sees the pair meet at a party before reuniting them at Calvin Klein.)
He added, “So I think it’s just a matter of splitting the difference, because people feel so adamant about both of these meet-cutes that I think it’s most likely plausible that both happened and they just informed the other.”
Fourth Of July 1995: A Proposal At Sea
According to Terenzio, Bessette, and Kennedy got engaged over the Fourth of July weekend. Bessette reportedly called Terenzio with the happy news, sharing that Kennedy popped the question on a boat with a sweet set-up: “When you go fishing, it’s always better with a partner. Will you be my partner?”
However, Terenzio was asked to issue a statement on behalf of her boss denying the engagement to prevent the reports from overshadowing the launch of Kennedy’s magazine, George. “Once again, John Kennedy seems to be bearing the brunt of a slow news day,” the statement read. “The stories circulating regarding an engagement are untrue. He is not engaged.”
Sept. 21, 1996: Kennedy & Bessette Say “I Do”
Kennedy and Bessette had a private wedding on Georgia’s Cumberland Island on Sept. 21, 1996. Bessette’s friend Narciso Rodriguez — whom she met while working at Calvin Klein — designed her dress.
“For me, it was the love of my life marrying the love of her life, and so it was a very heartfelt, emotional time,” the designer recently recalled to Vogue. “I remember going to Odeon and having cosmos with her at the bar, and her telling me that John had proposed and would I make her dress? It was such an exciting moment in all of our lives.”
July 16, 1999: Their Fatal Plane Crash
Kennedy, Bessette, and her sister, Lauren, tragically died in a plane crash en route to a Kennedy family wedding on July 16, 1999.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the accident cited the pilot (Kennedy)’s “failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation” as a probable cause, adding that haze and the dark night sky were contributing factors.
