What to Know About Diana de Vegh, Who Says She Had an Affair with JFK When She Was 20

An 83-year-old psychotherapist and grandmother of two, long described as a noted relationship expert, made headlines recently when she shared a very different side of herself:

In an essay published in August in Air Mail, Diana de Vegh described an affair with the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, starting when she was 20 years old.

Though de Vegh had never spoken publicly in this way, her account of their years-long relationship didn't arrive entirely out of the blue.

Descriptions of their affair were previously published in Vanity Fair editor Sally Bedell Smith's 2004 book about the Kennedys, Grace and Power.

At the time, The Texas Observer also made note of the relationship, with Robert Sherrill writing then that one of the paper's most well-known editors, Bill Brammer, had been dating de Vegh when he learned of her trysts with Kennedy.

"Nothing will come of it," de Vegh reportedly told Brammer, "but he has a hold on me."

In this week's issue of PEOPLE, de Vegh opens up about why she finally decided to tell her story in her own words as well as share hard lessons she learned about society and power from her time with Kennedy.

* For more on Diana de Vegh's account of her time with John F. Kennedy, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.

Hank Walker/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; Courtesy Diana de vegh From left: John F. Kennedy in 1957 and Diana de Vegh circa 1963

De Vegh's relationship with the man who would be president was sparked one night in 1958, when she caught Kennedy's eye at a political dinner ahead of his Senate re-election.

As she described to PEOPLE, Kennedy dazzled the room before turning his attention on her. "It was this kind of high-energy sparkle, and then it got focused on me," she says. "It's a tremendous trick to, I think, be lively and energetic and charming everybody all over the place. And then you make one person feel, oh, very special."

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He invited her to another appearance the following week, where she says she was charmed by his humor. Ultimately, their chance meeting ignited an approximately four-year-long affair.

Speaking to PEOPLE, de Vegh said she was "completely overwhelmed" by Kennedy.

"I mean, he was handsome. He was charming. He made an effort. He had men surrounding me who worked for him and who said, 'Isn't this wonderful? So great to see you,' " she said.

Speaking with The New York Post, de Vegh said she had carried the burden of the relationship as if it were "a pocket of dead energy," telling some journalists about it off-the-record but only recently coming forward publicly.

RELATED: JFK's 20-Year-Old Mistress Details Her Alleged Affair with Former President: 'Not a Romantic Story'

At least part of the reason for her openness, she said, was the new public focus on the power dynamic in relationships between older men and younger women often spotlighted in the #MeToo movement.

"I began eventually to question the culture, because the culture was about enabling a great man. I mean, John Kennedy did not have his womanizing life all by himself. He had it, thanks to many, many, many other men," she told PEOPLE.

Part of the reason for her decision was also herself, how she had changed.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Pix Inc./The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty John F. Kennedy

"My thought in telling it now is a) I'm so old, but I'm luckily a lot smarter and I now have language for my life, my feelings, my imagination," de Vegh said in an Air Mail podcast appearance accompanying her essay. "Then I had adrenaline, and that was it. So that when this starry person came along and shone on me, I just thought, Oh gosh this is wonderful."

De Vegh's affair with Kennedy began in 1958, when he was married and twice her age. (What his wife knew about and accepted — or tolerated — of his many reported indiscretions has long been the subject of discussion, but de Vegh says Jackie never came up in her conversations with Kennedy.)

It was by no means a traditional relationship, she has admitted. "He never brought me flowers ... but I was always treated courteously," she told PEOPLE.

Nonetheless, de Vegh believed it was true love.

"I considered myself madly in love," she said.

Kennedy, however, "was very scrupulous. He never said, 'I love you.' I thought it was a love affair."

In the end, their relationship was "not a romantic story," she wrote in her essay. Instead, it taught her difficult lessons about her value and identity and she said it took "years to recover" — "almost as many years" as it took for her to come forward with her story.

RELATED: Meet JFK's Alleged Mistresses – and How Some Met Mysterious Ends

Her relationship with Kennedy altered the course of her entire life, de Vegh wrote, with the two becoming strained as he gained political clout.

She remained enamored though, ultimately dropping out of graduate school and moving to Washington, D.C., after he was elected president in 1960.

It was there that she landed a job as a research assistant at the National Security Council — a role she later realized Kennedy had arranged for her.

"I was focused on my affair and on the other hand, I had a serious job and I was going to glamorous parties and that was very nice," she told PEOPLE. "I mean, it kept seeming like a really good life."

During the inaugural festivities in January 1961, de Vegh said she had a feeling that something had shifted.

"The man with whom I believed I was having a love affair did not want to connect certain dots," she wrote in her Air Mail essay. "In fact, he wanted me to be as isolated as possible, alone on the vast sea of his attention."

Bettmann/Getty John F Kennedy and Jackie

RELATED: Why JFK's Aide Decided to Tell Her Side of Their 4-Year Affair — and the Hard Lessons She Learned

Kelly Tsai Diana de Vegh in 2020

During their final rendezvous, de Vegh wrote, she accused Kennedy of no longer loving her, only to realize he had never used those words with her at all.

After their relationship ultimately fizzled — de Vegh remembers a "final scene" where he said he was sorry to hear her father had gotten sick — de Vegh ended things, leaving her position with the National Security Council and moving to Paris.

It was in Paris where she heard about Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, saying she "went numb" at the news.

Over time, she began a new life and a new relationship.

Following her marriage to a professor at Yale (where she attended the Yale Drama School), de Vegh moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and eventually back to New York City, where she lived with her two daughters and began working as an actress. Later, she returned to the country's capital, serving as the executive director for the Institute for Policy Studies before opening her psychotherapy practice at age 60 in N.Y.C., where she now lives.

"For a Great Man, he was still in the throes of the male mythology of his time: see pretty young woman, have pretty young woman," she wrote of Kennedy.

"I was young and dazzled. Now, I am old and blind. Let me tell you which I like better: hands-down, old and blind."