The Tamesis
Note: This story contains spoilers Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Bassett Kennedy Episode five.
love storyEpisode five, “Battery Park,” focuses on two important moments in the relationship of Caroline Bassett and John F. Kennedy Jr.: the proposal and the couple’s highly publicized argument in a New York City park. The famously private couple kept most details of their engagement secret from the media. In fact, they never even announced anything about their relationship until their wedding day, and flatly denied it when the engagement actually happened. But later interviews with members of his inner circle revealed some of what actually happened when the Kennedy heir proposed to Calvin Klein’s chic “VIP whisperer.”
Bessette and Kennedy first met in 1992 through Calvin Klein. When the assistant district attorney comes to the firm for a fitting, the stylish Bessette helps him. Although Kennedy gave her his phone number, the real romance didn’t begin until the spring of 1994. Kennedy first had to break up with actress Daryl Hannah, with whom she had an on-and-off relationship for years. In 2019 A&E Documentary JFK Jr.: Final year, Carol Radziwill, the widow of Kennedy’s cousin Anthony Radziwill, recalled: “We shared a summer house, Anthony, myself and John, and he brought her over for the Memorial Day weekend,” Radziwill said. “They had been seeing each other on the DL for a few months. That’s when I first met her.”
A year later, in 1995, Kennedy and Bessette were spending the Fourth of July weekend together on Martha’s Vineyard when Kennedy proposed. Similar to that described in love storyhis former aide Rosemary Terenzio revealed that Kennedy took Bessette out on a fishing boat to propose. “He talked about how having a partner makes everything better, not just fishing but life,” Terenzio told people 2022. “He said, ‘I want you to be my partner.'”
For the engagement ring, Kennedy gave Bessette a diamond and sapphire eternity ring, similar in design to one worn by his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Radziwill writes in her book what’s left Bassett later told her it was “a replica of a ring.” [John’s] My mother wore it. The original ring was a diamond and emerald eternity band that Kennedy Onassis called her “swimming ring.” It was likely a gift from her long-term partner, diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman.
Photo: Getty Images
