The True Story Behind Love Story: JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette
Ryan Murphy has a knack for producing stories inspired by true events. His American Crime Story series found him taking on the OJ Simpson trial, the assassination of Gianni Versace, and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in respective seasons. This time, Murphy is in the producer’s chair for FX’s Love Story, created by Connor Hines, about the extensively publicized romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon).
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Love Story begins with the 1999 plane ride that would eventually take the couple’s lives. Before getting to the fatal crash, the show jumps back seven years to 1992: when the couple met. Carolyn Bessette was working as a publicist at Calvin Klein, where her innate sense of style and ease working with people had her on the rise. JFK Jr. appeared to be trending in the opposite direction. Bestowed the title of People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1988, by ‘92, he was close to losing his job as assistant district attorney, and treated as something of a joke by the press.
The first three episodes of Love Story, out now on FX, trace how after meeting at a Calvin Klein party sometime in 1992, the pair did not actually start dating until a couple years later. Instead, the beginning of the series focuses on Kennedy’s on-again off-again relationship with the actor Daryl Hannah (Dree Hemingway), which his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Naomi Watts), reportedly never approved of (though in real life, Hannah’s stepmother, Sue Wexler, once told People, “Daryl told me [Onassis] has been very warm and affectionate.”) At the end of episode 3, Kennedy Onassis dies; shortly after, Kennedy and Hannah’s relationship ends for good.
In 1994, Kennedy and Bessette began dating, and their relationship was of great fascination for the public. To Americans everywhere, it felt like the couple could be the romantic heirs to JFK and Jackie O, who captured the hearts of Americans in the 1960s.
The romance between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette
After about a year of dating, Kennedy proposed to Bessette in Martha’s Vineyard in July 1995. As his former assistant, RoseMarie Terenzio, told People, he asked the question when they were on a fishing boat. He spoke of life being better with a partner and told Carolyn, “I want you to be my partner.” Carolyn waited three weeks before she agreed to the proposal.
On Feb. 25, 1996, the engaged couple was seen arguing while on a typical walk through Central Park. They were caught on camera, and their spat became national news, including a massive eight-page feature in the New York Daily News. Their fight became physical, as John attempted to take a ring (possibly her engagement ring) off her finger, and when John started to walk away, Carolyn jumped on his back. Video footage of the argument was analyzed left and right, and a public moment of frustration turned into a media circus.
Seven months later, on Sept. 21, 1996, Kennedy Jr. and Bessette married. Their ceremony was elaborate yet secluded, at the First African Baptist Church on Georgia’s Cumberland Island. For a couple that was constantly in the public eye, their nuptials, according to a friend of the couple and former Real Housewives of New York cast member Carole Radziwill, were “one of the best-kept secrets of modern time,” as she wrote for the Daily Mail. Radziwill wrote that upon arrival on the island, guests had to present a special coin—a rare Indian nickel—or else they would be escorted away. The number of attendees varies according to accounts. Radziwill writes that there were just 32 guests, while People reported 40 attendees. Regardless of the total number, it’s clear that the wedding provided the famous couple a complete break from the outside world.
After their wedding, the couple, especially Bessette, hoped for a more private life now that the question of whether they’d end up together was answered. She refused to speak to paparazzi, who waited for her outside her house every day, and followed her wherever she went. Her refusal to cooperate with them caused the media to turn on her, and tabloids branded her as an “ice queen,” a “harpy,” and even claimed she was “manipulative and controlling.” The more private she became, the angrier the tabloids got.
According to The List, Kennedy once made a plea to the paparazzi outside of the couple’s Tribeca apartment in defense of his wife. “I just ask [for] any privacy or room you could give her as she makes that adjustment. It would be greatly appreciated,” he said, before the couple went into a car. Though they cared greatly for each other, their relationship struggled, and like many couples, arguments became part of their routine. “They would love hard and fight hard. But they were very much in love,” Ariel Paredes, granddaughter of Jaqueline Kennedy’s former assistant Providencia Paredes, told People.
In the summer of 1999, on July 16, the couple was traveling to the wedding of Rory Kennedy, their cousin, in Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy, Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette flew in a small plane piloted by JFK Jr. to the wedding. According to the Washington Post, the plane, a Piper Saratoga, plummeted from 2,200 feet to 1,100 in a span of 14 seconds. The plane crashed, killing Kennedy, 38, Bessette-Kennedy, 33, and Lauren Bessette, 34.
On the morning of July 22, their ashes were scattered at sea from the Navy USS Briscoe, off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. A memorial service was held the following day, at the Church of St. Thomas More in New York City.