Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

Fashion and a Famous Marriage

Carolyn Jeanne Bessette was born on January 7, 1966, in White Plains, New York, and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, after her parents' divorce. She graduated from Boston University in 1988 and joined Calvin Klein, rising to director of publicity for the company's flagship store and a close collaborator of the designer himself.

She began dating John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1994. Their wedding on September 21, 1996, in a tiny wooden chapel on Cumberland Island, Georgia, was kept secret from the press until it was over, and the single photograph released of the couple leaving the chapel became one of the defining images of the decade. Her pared-down style, and the intense scrutiny she received in the streets of Manhattan, made her a reluctant fashion icon.

Death

On the evening of July 16, 1999, John Kennedy Jr. was piloting a Piper Saratoga from New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard with Carolyn and her elder sister Lauren Bessette aboard, en route to Rory Kennedy's wedding at Hyannis Port. The plane went down in the Atlantic in haze off the Vineyard, killing all three. The bodies were recovered five days later and their ashes were scattered at sea from a Navy destroyer. Carolyn was 33.

How did Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy die?

She died on July 16, 1999, at the age of 33, when the small plane piloted by her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., crashed into the Atlantic off Martha's Vineyard. Her sister Lauren Bessette was also killed.

Did Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr. have children?

No. The couple married in September 1996 and had no children when they died together in July 1999.