Princess Lee Radziwill Opens Up About Her Sister Jackie Kennedy and JFK
Princess Lee Radziwill sat down for a rare interview for the Vanity Fair "Sisters Issue" this month. At first, she was reticent about her famous older sibling, Jacqueline Lee "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis:
"Please tell me this is not a story about my sister and me. I'm just sick of that! It's like we're Siamese twins!" the 83-year-old Lee told the interviewer.
She eventually opened up, giving a revealing look into her glamorous life and complicated relationship with Jackie. Lee's first marriage to book publisher Michael Temple Canfield ended after her affair with aristocrat Stanislaw "Stas" Radziwill, who she went on to marry. Towards the end of her second marriage, the article details how close Lee became with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis while her sister was in the White House, recalling an earlier interview with Larry King in which he asked Lee if she ever considered marrying Onassis, to which she answered, "Who didn't?" Of course, Jackie would go on to marry the millionaire.
Lee admitted that being the sister of the First Lady wasn't always easy for her.
"There were so many things I couldn't do when my brother-in-law was president," Lee said. She says that after John F. Kennedy's death she thought, "Finally, I'm free."
Five years after JFK died, it was announced that Jackie would marry Onassis. But Lee didn't hear the news from her sister.
"Onassis told me," Lee said. "He begged me to come to the wedding."
The author writes that although Lee was publicly supportive of her sister, the marriage,"was a staggering blow from which their relationship would never completely recover."
When Jackie died in 1994, she left money and keepsakes for all of those close to her-including Lee's children. But "not even a memento was left for her sister."
Read the full interview here.
