15 Weird Facts About Jackie Kennedy’s Private Life – HT
Most people remember Jackie Kennedy as the elegant first lady in her iconic pink suit. But behind the poised facade was a woman with bizarre secrets. From a threeack a day smoking addiction, she hid from cameras to being paid to stay married and even having her own husband arranged for nude photos to be taken of her.
Here are 15 weird facts you didn’t know about Jackie Kennedy’s private life. Fact one, chain smoker who hid her habit. Jackie Kennedy was one of the most photographed women in the world. But there’s one thing you’ll almost never see in any of those thousands of images, a cigarette in her hand. That’s because Jackie was a serious chain smoker who went to extraordinary lengths to keep her habit hidden from the public eye.
She smoked three packs of cigarettes every single day for more than 40 years. Yet, she made absolutely sure that photographers never captured her with a cigarette anywhere near her mouth. Jackie understood the power of image control long before it became a common practice.
And she knew that being seen smoking would damage the pristine, elegant persona she worked so hard to maintain. She would literally demand that photographers put down their cameras if she needed to light up, and her Secret Service agents were instructed to help shield her whenever she wanted to smoke in public spaces.
Even at private events and parties where cameras might be present, Jackie remained vigilant about keeping her cigarettes out of view. Her close friends and family members knew about the habit, of course, but the general public remained largely unaware of just how heavy a smoker she really was. This lifelong addiction eventually caught up with her when she was diagnosed with non-hodkkins lymphoma in 1994, a cancer that spread to her brain and liver.
Doctors believed her decades of heavy smoking played a significant role in her illness. Jackie passed away on May 19th, 1994 at the age of 64. And only then did the full extent of her smoking habit become widely known to the public she had so carefully managed to keep in the dark. Fact two, paid to stay. Married to JFK.
Jackie Kennedy’s marriage to John F. Kennedy was far from the fairy tale it appeared to be in public and by the mid 1950s she had reached her breaking point with his constant infidelities and was seriously considering divorce. This created a massive problem for the Kennedy family because a divorced politician had virtually no chance of winning the presidency in that era and JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy senior had already invested enormous amounts of money and political capital into making his son president.
When Joe Kennedy learned that Jackie was preparing to leave the marriage, he knew he had to act quickly to prevent a scandal that would destroy everything he’d been working toward. So, he made Jackie an offer that was impossible to refuse. He would pay her $100,000 if she agreed to stay married to JFK and help him win the 1960 presidential election.
In today’s money, that amount would be worth well over $1 million, which was an absolutely staggering sum to offer someone just to remain in a marriage. Jackie accepted the deal, but she didn’t do it quietly or without conditions of her own. She made it clear that this was purely a business arrangement and that she expected certain things in return for playing the role of the devoted political wife.
The payment became an open secret among the Kennedy inner circle and it fundamentally changed the nature of Jackie’s relationship with the family. She had leverage now and she used it to negotiate more freedom and independence than she’d ever had before. Joe Kennedy kept his word and made sure Jackie received the money and Jackie kept her end of the bargain by staying in the marriage and becoming one of the most effective political assets JFK ever had.
Fact three, had a secret spy in the White House. Jackie Kennedy wasn’t naive about her husband’s affairs, and she certainly wasn’t going to sit around wondering what was happening behind closed doors while she was away. So, she came up with a solution that was both clever and surprisingly bold.
She placed her own informant right inside the office of Evelyn Lincoln, who was JFK’s personal secretary. This wasn’t just casual gossip gathering. Jackie had someone whose specific job was to monitor the president’s activities and report back to her about who was coming and going, especially which women were visiting the Oval Office and how long they stayed.
The arrangement gave Jackie an intelligence network right in the heart of the White House, allowing her to keep tabs on her husband’s extrammarital activities without having to confront him directly or rely on secondhand rumors. Evelyn Lincoln was fiercely loyal to JFK and managed his schedule with complete discretion, which made her office the perfect place to observe everything that happened.
Jackie spy would take note of suspicious appointments, late night visits, and any women who seemed to have unusually frequent access to the president. This information was then quietly passed along to Jackie, giving her a comprehensive picture of exactly what her husband was up to at any given time. The existence of this surveillance system shows just how far Jackie was willing to go to maintain some sense of control in a marriage that had long since lost any pretense of fidelity.
It also demonstrates that she was far more politically savvy and strategic than many people gave her credit for at the time. Rather than simply accepting her situation or making emotional scenes that could damage JFK’s presidency, she gathered information and used it to protect her own interests and make informed decisions about how to handle her increasingly complicated role as first lady.
Fact four, one leg shorter than the other. Jackie Kennedy’s seemingly effortless grace and perfect posture weren’t entirely natural. She had a physical challenge that she worked hard to conceal from the public eye. Jackie was born with one leg that was a quarter of an inch shorter than the other, a condition known as leg length discrepancy that can cause problems with balance, posture, and even back pain if left uncorrected.
Most people with this condition simply live with it or wear a lift in one shoe occasionally. But Jackie took a much more comprehensive approach to solving the problem. She had custom lifts installed in every single pair of shoes she owned, ensuring that no matter what she was wearing or where she was going, her posture would remain perfectly straight and her gate would appear completely natural.
This wasn’t just about a few pairs of dress shoes. Jackie had an enormous collection of footwear, and each pair had to be specially modified to accommodate her leg length difference. The lifts were carefully designed to be invisible from the outside so that no one would ever suspect she was wearing anything other than regular shoes.
Her shoemakers and personal staff were sworn to secrecy about this detail because Jackie was extremely private about any perceived physical imperfection. The fact that she managed to keep this hidden for so long is remarkable considering how closely she was watched and photographed throughout her entire adult life.
Fashion magazines analyzed every detail of her outfits, and shoe designers tried to copy her style. Yet, none of them ever noticed or reported on the custom modifications built into her footwear. This level of attention to detail shows just how committed Jackie was to maintaining a flawless public image, even when it meant going to extraordinary lengths to hide something as minor as a small difference in leg length.
Fact five, childhood troublemaker at school. Long before she became known as the epitome of grace and refinement, young Jacqueline Bouvier was actually quite a handful for her teachers and school administrators. Her instructors at Miss Chapen School in New York City described her as being full of the devil, which was about as harsh a criticism as proper 1930s educators would use for a student from a wealthy family.
Jackie was bright and curious, but she also had a mischievous streak that frequently got her into trouble, particularly during geography lessons, which she seemed to find especially boring. She would disrupt class by talking out of turn, passing notes to her classmates, or simply refusing to pay attention to whatever the teacher was trying to explain about maps and countries.
Her behavior became such a regular problem that she was sent to the head mistress’s office on multiple occasions. something that would have been deeply embarrassing for most students, but didn’t seem to phase Jackie very much. The head mistress would lecture her about proper behavior and the importance of setting a good example for the other girls, but these talks rarely had any lasting effect.
Jackie would return to class, behave herself for a little while, and then inevitably find herself in trouble again before too long. Her teachers noted that she was clearly intelligent and capable of excellent work when she actually applied herself, which made her disruptive behavior all the more frustrating for them.
Part of the problem was that Jackie was genuinely bored by subjects that didn’t interest her, and she saw no reason to pretend otherwise, just to make her teachers happy. This rebellious streak and unwillingness to simply go along with expectations actually served her well later in life when she had to navigate the complicated world of politics and high society on her own terms.
Fact six won a 26-year legal war with a paparazzi. Jackie Kennedy’s relationship with photographer Ron Galella became one of the most famous and bitter battles between a celebrity and a member of the paparazzi in American history. Gala was obsessed with photographing Jackie and would follow her everywhere she went, jumping out from behind bushes, chasing her down streets, and even following her children to school and playground.
His tactics became so aggressive and intrusive that Jackie finally decided to take legal action against him in 1972, filing a lawsuit that sought to stop his harassment once and for all. The first trial resulted in a restraining order that required Gala to stay at least 50 yards away from Jackie and 75 yards away from her children, but he repeatedly violated these terms and continued to photograph her whenever he could get away with it.
Jackie was forced to take him back to court in 1981 after he kept breaking the restraining order. And this time, the judge had absolutely no patience for his excuses. The second ruling was far more severe. Gala was banned from ever photographing Jackie or her children again under any circumstances. And if he violated this order, he would face serious legal consequences, including possible jail time.
This effectively ended his ability to make money from stalking the Kennedy family, which had been his primary source of income for years. The legal battle lasted 26 years in total and cost both sides enormous amounts of money in legal fees. But Jackie was determined to protect her privacy and her children’s safety no matter what it took.
Gala later claimed that he was just doing his job as a photojournalist, but the courts disagreed and sided with Jackie’s argument that his behavior crossed the line from journalism into harassment and stalking. Fact seven, her husband arranged nude photos. One of the most shocking betrayals Jackie Kennedy ever experienced came not from strangers or enemies, but allegedly from her own husband, Aristotle Onasses.
In 1972, nude photographs of Jackie sunbathing on Scorpios, Onasses’s private Greek island, suddenly appeared in an Italian magazine and quickly spread to publications around the world. The photos caused an enormous scandal and were deeply humiliating for Jackie, who had always been so careful about maintaining her dignity and privacy.
What made the situation even worse was that many people close to the couple believed Onasis himself had orchestrated the whole thing as a form of revenge against Jackie for her out of control spending habits. By that point in their marriage, Jackie had been spending enormous amounts of Onass’s money on clothes, jewelry, and artwork, reportedly running up bills of more than $1 million in a single year.
Onass was furious about the spending and felt that Jackie was taking advantage of him. But rather than confronting her directly about it, he allegedly decided to humiliate her publicly by arranging for paparazzi photographers to gain access to his supposedly secure private island. The timing of the photos was too convenient to be coincidental, and several members of Onass’s staff later suggested that he had deliberately allowed the photographers onto the property.
Jackie was devastated by the betrayal and by the fact that intimate photographs of her were now being published in magazines around the world for anyone to see. The incident permanently damaged her relationship with Oness, and although they remained married until his death in 1975, the trust between them never fully recovered from this incident. Fact 8.
Edited Michael Jackson’s autobiography. After leaving the White House and later ending her marriage to Aristotle Onasses, Jackie Kennedy surprised many people by pursuing a career in book publishing, eventually becoming an editor at Double Day. One of her most unexpected projects came in the mid 1980s when she was assigned to work on Michael Jackson’s autobiography, which would eventually be published as Moonwalk in 1988.
Michael Jackson was at the absolute peak of his fame following the massive success of the Thriller album, and he was notoriously difficult to reach and even harder to pin down for the kind of detailed conversations that writing a memoir requires. Double Day executives were frustrated because Jackson would ignore their phone calls and cancel scheduled meetings, making it nearly impossible to actually get the book written.
That’s when Jackie stepped in and used her unique combination of charm, patience, and genuine interest in Jackson’s story to get him talking. She was apparently the only person at the publishing house who could actually get Michael Jackson on the phone when they needed him, and she would spend hours conducting interviews with him about his childhood, his music, and his experiences in the entertainment industry.
Jackson seemed to trust Jackie in a way that he didn’t trust other people in the publishing world, perhaps because she understood what it was like to live under constant public scrutiny and to have your privacy invaded at every turn. Jackie worked closely with Jackson throughout the writing process, helping him organize his thoughts and memories into a coherent narrative while also respecting his desire to maintain control over his own story.
The book became a bestseller when it was finally published, and Jackie’s role in making it happen demonstrated that she had real skills as an editor and not just a famous name that Double Day wanted on their staff. Fact nine, hated her iconic wedding dress. Jackie Kennedy’s wedding to John F. Kennedy in September of 1953 was a major social event and her wedding dress has since become one of the most famous bridal gowns in American history.
The dress was designed by Anne Low, a black designer from New York who was one of the most talented couturers of her era, though she often didn’t receive the credit she deserved. The gown featured an intricately detailed bodice and an enormous skirt made from 50 yards of ivory silk taffida.
And it took Low and her team two months to complete. By all objective standards, it was a masterpiece of mid-century bridal design. But Jackie absolutely hated it from the moment she first saw herself wearing it. She complained to friends and family members that the dress made her look like a lampshade because of the way the full skirt flared out from her small waist, creating a silhouette that she found unflattering and ridiculous.
Even worse, Jackie was self-conscious about having a relatively flat chest, and she felt that the dress’s fitted bodice only drew more attention to this feature that she wished she could hide. She would have preferred something more fitted and elegant with clean lines that emphasized her height and slender frame rather than all the volume and decoration that the dress actually featured.
The problem was that the wedding wasn’t really about what Jackie wanted. It was a Kennedy family production and her future mother-in-law had very specific ideas about what an appropriate Kennedy bride should wear. Jackie had to wear the dress and smile for all the photographs, but she never looked back on it with any fondness or nostalgia, and she rarely spoke about her wedding day in later years, except to occasionally mention how much she had disliked that dress.
Fact 10, cultivated a fake breathy voice. Jackie Kennedy’s distinctive, breathy, whispery way of speaking became one of her most recognizable characteristics, but it wasn’t actually her natural voice at all. The soft, almost childlike quality that made her sound so different from other women in politics, was something she had been taught to cultivate during her years at Miss Porter School, an elite finishing school for young women from wealthy families.
The school taught what was known as a mid-atlantic accent, which was a deliberately artificial way of speaking that combined elements of British English and American English to create something that sounded refined and sophisticated. This wasn’t a regional accent that people naturally developed from growing up in a particular area.
It was a learned speech pattern that required conscious effort to maintain, especially the breathy, soft-spoken delivery that Jackie made her trademark. Voice coaches at finishing schools like Miss Porters taught young women to speak this way because it was considered elegant and upper class and it helped distinguish them from women who hadn’t received the same kind of expensive private education.
Jackie took these lessons very seriously and worked hard to perfect this speaking style even though it meant essentially suppressing her natural voice and replacing it with something entirely artificial. People who knew Jackie well said that her real voice was actually deeper and more forceful than the public version, but she almost never let that authentic voice be heard in any recorded interview or public appearance.
The breathy, whispery quality also made her seem more vulnerable and less threatening, which was useful for a woman in her position because it allowed her to wield considerable influence while still conforming to the era’s expectations about how women should present themselves in public spaces. Fact 11.
Burned her private letters before death. When Jackie Kennedy was diagnosed with non-hodkkins lymphoma in January of 1994, she knew that her time was limited and that she needed to take control of how her story would be told after she was gone. 3 months before her death while she was still strong enough to handle the physical task, Jackie made the deliberate decision to destroy a massive collection of personal letters and correspondents that she had accumulated over her lifetime.
These weren’t just random notes or casual messages. This collection included letters from some of the most important people in her life, including intimate correspondence from John F. Kennedy during their courtship and marriage, letters from various lovers and romantic partners she had over the years, and personal communications from friends and family members who had shared their deepest thoughts with her.
Jackie spent hours going through boxes of these letters, reading them one final time before feeding them into a fire or shredder, making absolutely certain that no one would ever be able to access this material after her death. She was acutely aware that historians and biographers would be eager to examine every scrap of paper related to her life, and she was determined to maintain control over her legacy by removing anything that might contradict the image she wanted to leave behind.
Some of her friends and family members were shocked when they learned what she had done, arguing that these letters were historically important documents that belonged in archives where scholars could study them. But Jackie didn’t care about historical preservation.
She cared about protecting her privacy and the privacy of the people who had confided in her over the years. By destroying these letters, she made sure that certain stories would die with her and that future generations would never have access to the complete unfiltered truth about her relationships and private thoughts.
Fact 12 predicted Marilyn Monroe’s suicide. Jackie Kennedy was well aware of her husband’s affair with Marilyn Monroe. And unlike some of JFK’s other extrammarital relationships, this one genuinely worried her because of Monroe’s obvious emotional instability and mental health struggles. Jackie had never met Monroe personally, but she had heard enough stories and seen enough news coverage to recognize that the actress was deeply troubled and potentially dangerous, both to herself and to JFK’s political career. At some
point during the affair, Jackie directly confronted her husband about the relationship and told him in very clear terms that Marilyn Monroe was a suicide waiting to happen and that he needed to end things with her immediately before the situation spiraled out of control. She wasn’t just concerned about the political scandal that would result if the affair became public knowledge.
Jackie was genuinely worried that Monroe’s mental state was deteriorating so rapidly that something terrible was going to happen. and she didn’t want JFK to be anywhere near the actress when it did. Jackie begged her husband to stop seeing Monroe and to cut off all contact with her, warning him that the woman was unstable enough to do something drastic that would destroy his presidency.
JFK apparently dismissed Jackie’s concerns at first, but the relationship with Monroe did eventually end, though whether that was because of Jackie’s warnings or for other reasons remains unclear. Then just a few months later on August 5th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home from an apparent overdose of barbiterates and Jackie’s prediction had tragically come true.
Monroe’s death was ruled a probable suicide, though conspiracy theories about the circumstances have persisted for decades. Jackie never publicly commented on Monroe’s death, but people close to her said she felt vindicated in her assessment of the actress’s mental state, even though she took no pleasure in being proven right about something so terrible. Fact 13.
Used Dexadrine to survive inauguration. Jackie Kennedy gave birth to her son John Jr. on November 25th, 1960, just a few weeks before her husband’s presidential inauguration in January of 1961. The pregnancy and delivery had been difficult, and Jackie’s recovery was slower than anyone had hoped, leaving her physically exhausted and emotionally drained at precisely the moment when she needed to be at her best for one of the most important events of her life.
The presidential inauguration wasn’t just a single ceremony. It included days of events, parties, and formal balls that required Jackie to be on her feet for hours at a time, smiling and socializing with thousands of people while wearing elaborate gowns and high heels. There was simply no way she could have made it through all of these obligations in her current state of exhaustion without some kind of pharmaceutical assistance.
So Jackie’s doctors prescribed dexadrine, which was an amphetamine medication commonly used in that era to combat fatigue and provide energy, though it’s now understood to be highly addictive and potentially dangerous. She took the medication to get through the inauguration festivities, and it gave her the artificial energy boost she needed to appear alert and engaged even though she was physically running on empty.
Jackie managed to attend all five inaugural balls and fulfill all of her duties as the incoming first lady without any public indication that she was struggling with exhaustion or relying on medication to function. The use of dexadrine and similar amphetamines was far more common in the 1960s than most people realize and doctors prescribed these drugs quite freely for everything from weight loss to fatigue without fully understanding the long-term consequences or addiction potential. Fact 14 demanded
freedom to have affairs. After Joe Kennedy offered Jackie $100,000 to stay married to JFK and help him win the presidency, Jackie didn’t just accept the money and agree to play along quietly. She used the negotiation as an opportunity to completely redefine the terms of her marriage and establish ground rules that would give her much more freedom and independence than she’d ever had before.
One of the key conditions Jackie insisted on was that if she was going to be forced to tolerate JFK’s ongoing infidelities and pretend to be a happily married wife in public, then she should be allowed to do whatever she liked in her private life as long as she was discreet about it. This was essentially Jackie demanding the same freedom to have extrammarital affairs that her husband had been exercising throughout their entire marriage.
and it represented a dramatic shift in the power dynamic between them. JFK and his father agreed to Jackie’s terms because they needed her cooperation far more than she needed them, and they couldn’t risk losing her at such a critical moment in JFK’s political career. The arrangement meant that Jackie could pursue relationships with other men without having to worry about JFK getting angry or jealous as long as she was careful not to create any public scandals that might damage his presidency. This agreement remained
in place throughout JFK’s time in office, and there have been various rumors over the years about romantic relationships Jackie may have had during this period, though she was always extremely careful to maintain her public image and never gave reporters any concrete evidence of affairs. The arrangement shows just how transactional and business-like Jackie’s marriage to JFK had become by the time he entered the White House, with both parties understanding that they were maintaining a political
partnership rather than a romantic relationship. Fact 15. Nail-biting anxiety around JFK’s assassination anniversary. The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963 traumatized Jackie in ways that never fully healed. And every year when the anniversary approached, she would experience severe anxiety and emotional distress that manifested in physical ways.
One of the most visible signs of her annual distress was that she would bite her fingernails down to the quick throughout the entire month of November. A nervous habit that she couldn’t seem to control no matter how hard she tried. Jackie was normally very careful about her appearance and always maintained perfectly manicured hands.
But in November, that all went out the window as she compulsively bit her nails in response to the overwhelming stress and painful memories that the anniversary brought. flooding back. The problem wasn’t just her own private memories of that terrible day in Dallas. It was also the fact that every newspaper, magazine, and television station would run extensive coverage of the assassination as the anniversary approached.
Meaning that Jackie couldn’t escape the reminders even if she wanted to. Journalists would request interviews, documentaries would be broadcast, and conspiracy theorists would publish new books claiming to have solved the mystery of who really killed JFK. All of this media attention forced Jackie to relive the worst day of her life over and over again, year after year, and there was nothing she could do to make it stop.
Her children noticed the change in her behavior every November and learned to be extra gentle and supportive during this difficult time. Friends would try to distract her with trips or social events, but nothing really helped until the anniversary had passed and December arrived. Only then would Jackie finally relax enough to stop biting her nails and begin the slow process of recovering her composure until the next November rolled around and the cycle started all over Gap.