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Joan B. Kennedy, the former wife of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy who endured a troubled marriage marked by family tragedies, her husband’s infidelities and her own decades-long struggles with alcoholism and mental health, died on Wednesday. She was 89.
The former Joan Bennett, one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy, was a model and classically trained pianist when she married Ted Kennedy in 1958.
Their lives would change unimaginably over the next decade and a half. Brother-in-law John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later. Brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under JFK, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 and was assassinated while seeking the presidency.
Her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and became among the country’s most respected legislators despite initial misgivings that he was capitalizing on his family connections. But Ted Kennedy also lived through scandals of his own making. In 1969, the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his young female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Kennedy, who swam to safety and waited hours before alerting police, later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Chappaquiddick shadowed him for the rest of his life, weighing against his own chances for the presidency.
Joan Kennedy had three children with her husband, but also had miscarriages, including one shortly after the Chappaquiddick accident. She stood by her husband through the scandal, but their estrangement was nearly impossible to hide by the time of his unsuccessful effort to defeat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries. They were separated by then, and would later divorce in 1982. One bumper sticker from the campaign read “Vote for Jimmy Carter, Free Joan Kennedy.”
Her death comes about a year after Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, died at the age of 96, having raised their 11 children after he was assassinated, and remaining dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades thereafter.
Virginia Joan Bennett was born into a prominent Bronxville, New York, family. As a teen, she worked as a model in TV ads. She was a classmate of Jean Kennedy, the future senator’s sister, at Manhattanville College, where her exceptional beauty caught Ted Kennedy’s eye when he visited the campus for a building dedication in 1957.
They married a year later, but Joan Kennedy struggled from the start to fit in to the high-powered family.
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