Kennedy, Joan (1936—)

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Kennedy, Joan (1936—)

American socialite and former wife of Edward "Ted" Kennedy. Born Virginia Joan Bennett on September 5, 1936, in Riverdale, New York; eldest of two daughters of Harry Wiggin (an advertising executive) and Virginia Joan "Ginny" (Stead) Bennett; graduated from Bronxville (New York) High School, 1954; graduated from Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, New York, 1958; married Edward "Ted" Kennedy (b. 1932, a lawyer and U.S. senator), on November 29, 1958 (divorced 1982); children:Kara Anne Kennedy (b. 1960, a homemaker who married architect Michael Allen); Edward "Teddy" Moore Kennedy, Jr. (b. 1961, a lawyer); Patrick Joseph Kennedy (b. 1967, a congressional representative). Ted Kennedy marriedVictoria Reggie in 1992.

The daughter of a successful advertising executive, Joan Bennett Kennedy was born in 1936 and grew up in the upper-middle-class community of Bronxville, New York, just blocks from where her future husband spent his early childhood. A stunning blonde, Joan was an accomplished pianist and also modeled briefly while attending Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, where she met Edward "Ted" Kennedy during a campus dedication ceremony of the Kennedy Physical Education Building in 1957. The couple had their first date in New York City during Thanksgiving break and were married a year later. Very early in the marriage, Ted devoted himself to his brother John F. Kennedy's presidential candidacy, and Joan vowed "to be ready to go anywhere and to accommodate myself to my husband's schedule." She held to that promise through Jack's election and Ted's own campaign for the Senate in 1962. Arriving in Washington in 1963, she embarked on a glamorous life as the wife of a senator and the sister-in-law of the president.

It was not long, however, before Joan began feeling like an outsider among the highly competitive Kennedy clan. Although she struck out on her own to successfully narrate "Peter and the Wolf" with the National Symphony Washington and several other orchestras, it was not enough to compensate for her feelings of inferiority. She began to wear attention-seeking clothes to Capitol functions—mini-skirts, see-through blouses, and shiny knee-high black boots—that set tongues wagging and made national headlines.

Then, there were the ceaseless tragedies during the 1960s and 1970s: the assassinations of John and then Robert F. Kennedy; Ted's own brush with death in an airplane crash; the incident at Chappaquiddick which resulted in the death of Ted's campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne ; and, finally, son Teddy's bout with cancer in 1973, which resulted in the amputation of his lower right leg. These events, coupled with Ted's philandering and Joan's growing dependence on alcohol, put further strains on the already shaky marriage. After several separations and reconciliations, one in 1979, when Ted attempted a presidential run, the Kennedys divorced in 1982. Joan eventually overcame much of her insecurity, though she still considers herself a recovering alcoholic. She remains joined to the Kennedy clan only through her three children.