John F Kennedy, Carolyn Bessette unveil their real-life love story

John F Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette revealed their real-life love story.

The limited series featured Paul Anthony Kelly as John F. Kennedy, son of  President John F Kennedy and first lady Jackie Kennedy, and Sarah Pidgeon as Calvin Klein associate Carolyn Bessette. The series showcased the love story of the couple falling in love and eventually getting married.

However, Love Story also includes the low points of their relationship, including an anonymous letter sent to JFK Jr. that made allegations about Bessette. While the show only portrayed the letter as a minor setback, the letter, according to one author, was reportedly a point of contention in their relationship and caused them to break up for a year.

Author Elizabeth Beller, who wrote the 2024 book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, on which the series is based, acknowledged the “messy” breakup and claimed that it occurred at the beginning of their romance.

In Love Story, JFK Jr. is playing football with friends in Central Park when he opens his gym bag to see a handwritten letter addressed to him. Among other things, the anonymous author alleged that Bessette begged Klein to introduce them, that she was “fixated” on him, did drugs and that she had “shady” friends and exes.

After confronting Bessette about it in the show, she storms out of his apartment, and they break up. In the episode, JFK Jr. immediately regrets believing the contents of the letter and calls her several times to try to get back together. After showing up at her apartment, he apologises, and they make up.

According to Beller, the significant moment, JFK Jr. received a devastating anonymous letter about his then-girlfriend towards the beginning of their relationship in 1992.

“The letter claimed Carolyn was a user, a partier, that she was out for fame and fortune” and that she “dated guys around town,” Beller wrote.

JFK Jr., who was “trained to be wary” of people taking advantage of his fame, reportedly took the letter “to heart” and at “face value.”

The author of the anonymous letter has never been publicly identified, but Beller claimed it was one of JFK Jr.’s friends from New York.

“The author who sent it to him, a friend of his, came from the milieu of boarding schools, Ivy League universities and ‘old money’ families of New York, though he didn’t divulge those facts until much later,” Beller wrote.

She added that it allegedly took Bessette a “few years” to figure out who wrote the letter, but once she discovered the truth, she went on to “freeze them out.”

Beller wrote that JFK Jr. quickly tried to reconcile with Bessette by calling her personal and work phones and sending her flowers, but she didn’t respond to any of his advances.

Bessette and JFK Jr. began to officially and exclusively date in early 1994, and their relationship was made public via paparazzi photos the following year. They got engaged over the Fourth of July weekend on Martha’s Vineyard in 1995 and tied the knot on Sept. 21, 1996.

 

JFK Jr. and Bessette remained together until they died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999.