Inside Jacqueline Kennedy’s love life after JFK — from a secret romance to the marriage she called a ‘mistake’

LEAVE A COMMENT While Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' defining relationship was of course with John F. Kennedy, she lived 30 years as a widow, and her second and third acts proved to be fruitful both professionally and romantically.

Prior to her headline-making marriage to JFK, Jackie, who was born in Southampton and raised in New York City, was briefly engaged to John Husted Jr., a stockbroker she met after attending Vassar College. She reportedly ended things after learning at their 1952 engagement party that he only made $17,000 a year (around $216,000 today).

She met the future president later that year, tying the knot on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island.

They welcomed four children, though only two of them survived infancy: Caroline Kennedy, now 68, and John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash when he was 38 in 1999.

JFK's life — along with his love story with Jackie, and Camelot — was tragically cut short on November 22, 1963, when he was shot to death while cruising with his motorcade in Dallas. Thus began Jackie's three decades as a widow, during which she married a Greek tycoon, honed herself into an acclaimed book editor in New York City, and spent her last decade and a half with a diamond merchant who became a devoted partner.

Read all about the loves that succeeded JFK below.

Jackie first found solace — and love — after her husband's assassination in architect John Carl "Jack" Warnecke. He and Jackie, a fierce conservationist, first met while she was still first lady when he was commissioned to save a series of historic buildings in Washington, D.C.

Jackie later hired Warnecke to design her late husband's grave and memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. A serious romance ensued, but reportedly more so for Warnecke than for Jackie. The two are said to have even discussed marriage on a trip to Hawai'i in the summer of 1966, but their relationship came to an end after they discussed their finances, and Warnecke, who had four kids from a previous marriage, confessed to being $650,000 in debt.

Warnecke, who died in 2010 at 91, detailed his relationship with Jackie in his posthumous memoir, Camelot's Architect: The Untold Story of Jackie Kennedy, Lafayette Square and a Secret Romance. "Sometimes Jackie would come and visit me at my apartment on her way home from work. She casually would lounge at the foot of the bed, as I leaned my back against the tall headboard, talking away intimately and easily for hours and giving each other the kind of truthful advice only two people who are very close can," he wrote in his book, released on November 10.

He also claimed Jackie confessed to him that her subsequent marriage to Aristotle Onassis was "the biggest mistake she had ever made."

Jackie went on to briefly date one of JFK's closest friends, David Ormsby-Gore, the former British ambassador also known as Lord Harlech. Following the death of his wife in 1967, his relationship with Jackie deepened, and a highly-publicized trip to Cambodia that November sparked romantic speculation.

Jackie however married Onassis less than a year later, and it wasn't until 2017 that more insight into their relationship was revealed. In a letter to Ormsby-Gore from Jackie discovered in his family home and listed for auction, Jackie detailed why she turned down his marriage proposal. "If ever I can find some healing and some comfort — it has to be with somebody who is not part of all my world of past and pain," she explained. "I can find that now — if the world will let us."

She wrote to her former beau from Onassis' yacht in Greece on November 13, 1968, a month after remarrying. "We have known so much & shared & lost so much together — Even if it isn't the way you wish now — I hope that bond of love and pain will never be cut," she further penned. "You are like my beloved beloved brother — and mentor — and the only original spirit I know — as you were to Jack."

Jackie married Onassis, a Greek shipping magnate 23 years her senior, on October 20, 1968, in a private Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony on his private island Skorpios, in the Ionian Sea. Shortly after, in her letter to Ormsby-Gore, she said Onassis is "lonely and wants to protect me from being lonely. And he is wise and kind. Only I can decide if he can, and I decided."

"I know it comes as a surprise to so many people," she added. "But they see things for me that I never wanted for myself."

Onassis had previously dated Jackie's younger sister Lee Radziwill, and similarly swept Jackie off her feet when he invited her to his private Greek island in 1967. Radziwill reportedly learned of her sister's forthcoming nuptials from Onassis himself in his invitation to the ceremony, and despite initial hesitation and anger, she was ultimately happy for her sister.

After marrying Onassis, who had an estimated net worth of $500 million, Jackie took the legal name Jacqueline Onassis, and consequently lost her right to Secret Service protection in becoming "Jackie O."

The couple spent their days between six different residences, including Onassis' yacht, as well as Jackie's 15-room Fifth Avenue apartment, her horse farm in New Jersey, his apartment in the 16th arrondissement in Paris, his private island, and a house in Athens.

Jackie was widowed again six and a half years after marrying Onassis, when he died at 69 on March 15, 1975 in Paris, of respiratory failure. Their marriage was reportedly already on the rocks in the lead-up to his death. After two years of legal wrangling over his estate — Onassis' fortune was tied up because of Greek law, which dictated how much a non-Greek surviving spouse could inherit — Jackie accepted a $26 million settlement from his daughter and sole living heir, Christina Onassis.

By many accounts, Jackie found actual, true love again after JFK's death not in Onassis but in a more quiet, long-lasting relationship: with Belgian-American diamond merchant and international businessman Maurice Tempelsman.

They met in the 1950s when Tempelsman — who remained married but separated throughout his courtship with Jackie — arranged a meeting between JFK and representatives of the South African diamond business.

When he and Jackie reconnected around 1980, he helped her get her life back (Jackie returned to New York City and spent her last decades working as a book editor), helping settle her finances; as her financial adviser, he reportedly quadrupled her multi-million-dollar inheritance from Onassis. They were also of the same age, and shared the same penchant for privacy, though they were often photographed walking Central Park, as well as to and from the hospital while she was undergoing cancer treatment.

The pair lived together in her Fifth Avenue apartment, and he was her faithful companion, as well as a father figure to her children, until her death from cancer in 1994. He died at 95 on August 23, 2025. His New York Times obituary reads: "In New York, they entertained friends for dinner and liked to go to small restaurants on the Upper East Side. They enjoyed speaking French together during their walks in Central Park. As their romance flowered, they spent weekends at Mrs. Onassis's horse farm in New Jersey and summers together at her oceanfront estate on Martha's Vineyard, sometimes sailing aboard his yacht, the Relemar."

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