Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

 NAME Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, known affectionately throughout her life as "Jackie." She was born Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, took the name Kennedy upon her first marriage, and became Onassis after her second. (1)

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was the First Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963 as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. She became a global icon of elegance, culture, and style, renowned for her historic restoration of the White House and her poise in leading a grieving nation following her husband's assassination. Later in life, she established a distinguished career as a senior book editor in New York City. (2)

BIRTH Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York, to Wall Street stockbroker John Vernou "Black Jack" Bouvier III (1891–1957) and Janet Norton Lee (1907–1989). (3)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Jackie's father was a charming but financially erratic Wall Street broker of French Catholic descent, while her mother came from a socially ambitious Irish-American family. The Bouviers were part of the East Coast social elite, and Jackie's maternal grandfather, James T. Lee, was a wealthy New York real estate developer and banker. 

Jackie had one younger sister, Caroline Lee Bouvier, known as "Lee," who later became Princess Lee Radziwill. (3)

CHILDHOOD Jackie's early years were divided between New York City and East Hampton, Long Island, at the Bouvier family estate known as "Lasata." 

From a very young age she showed a gift for horsemanship, reportedly able to control her own pony at just three years old, and she went on to become an accomplished equestrienne who competed in horse shows throughout her childhood. 

Her parents' marriage was troubled by her father's drinking and infidelity, and they divorced in 1940, a rare and socially difficult event for the era. 

In 1942 her mother married Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss, and Jackie and Lee moved in with their mother's new family, dividing their time between two grand estates: Merrywood in McLean, Virginia, and Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. (4)

Six-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier with her dog in 1935

EDUCATION Jackie was educated at Miss Chapin's School in New York and later at Holton-Arms School near Washington, D.C., before attending the exclusive Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. She went on to study art and history at Vassar College, spent a formative year of study in Paris (an experience she called the happiest of her life), and completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature at George Washington University in 1951.

In 1951, at age 22, she also won a prestigious Vogue Prix de Paris writing contest, besting 1,279 other entrants for a role that promised six months as a junior editor in New York and six months in Paris; she famously quit on her very first morning at the magazine. (5)

CAREER RECORD 1951 Worked briefly as an "inquiring photographer" for the Washington Times-Herald newspaper, interviewing members of the public and photographing them for a daily column, a job that also indirectly brought her into contact with Washington's political circles.

1953-1961 Following her marriage to Senator John F. Kennedy, she supported his political career, becoming a prominent Senate wife.

1961-1963 Served as First Lady of the United States, leading the historic restoration of the White House and establishing the White House Fine Arts Committee; her televised tour of the restored White House on February 14, 1962, drew more than 80 million viewers and earned her an honorary Emmy.

1975 onward, became a prominent campaigner for historic preservation in New York City, most notably helping save Grand Central Terminal from demolition, a fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978.

1975-1978 Worked as a consulting editor at Viking Press in New York.

1978-1994 Worked as a book editor at Doubleday, where she edited numerous titles including several John F. Kennedy biographies and Michael Jackson's 1988 autobiography, Moon Walk. (6)

APPEARANCE Jackie was tall and slender for the era, with dark hair, wide-set eyes, and a striking, photogenic bone structure that made her a natural for the camera from a young age. Already considered stylish and graceful as a teenager, in 1948 she was dubbed "Debutante of the Year" by Hearst society columnist Igor Cassini. Her poise and elegance became so central to her public identity that she was regularly ranked among the most photographed women in the world throughout her adult life. (7)

Kennedy at a State dinner on May 22, 1962

FASHION In the early 1960s, Jackie was largely responsible for popularizing the bouffant hairstyle, and her clean-lined suits with skirts hemmed to the middle of the knee, three-quarter sleeves on notch-collar jackets, sleeveless A-line dresses, above-the-elbow gloves, and pillbox hats became known collectively as the "Jackie look." 

Because she had been publicly criticized for favoring foreign designers, the New York salon Chez Ninon created line-for-line American reproductions of Chanel designs for her, including the pink wool suit she wore on November 22, 1963. 

After John F. Kennedy's assassination, Jackie refused to change out of that bloodstained pink suit for Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One, reportedly telling Lady Bird Johnson, "Oh no, I want them to see what they've done to Jack." (7)

CHARACTER Those who knew her described Jackie as intelligent, private, and fiercely protective of her children, combining old-money reserve with genuine intellectual curiosity about literature, art, and history. She once wrote in her school yearbook that her ambition in life was "not to be a housewife," a statement that hinted at an independence of spirit unusual for women of her social class in that era. 

Friends and biographers frequently noted her contradictions: a woman who craved privacy yet lived much of her life in the full glare of global publicity, and who combined vulnerability with steely self-discipline, particularly evident in the composure she displayed after her husband's assassination. (8)

SPEAKING VOICE Jackie was known for her distinctive soft, breathy, almost whispery speaking voice, often imitated and parodied but instantly recognizable, which many contemporaries found hypnotic and which contributed to her mystique on television and radio broadcasts. She was multilingual and taped campaign radio advertisements in French, Italian, and Spanish during her husband's 1960 presidential run, in addition to being proficient in German and Polish. (3)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Jackie was known among friends for a sharp, dry wit that rarely surfaced in public but delighted those close to her, and she could be self-deprecating about the pressures of fame. She once remarked, "I think my biggest achievement is that, after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane. I'm proud of that," a comment that captured both her humor and her resilience. (9)

RELATIONSHIPS Before meeting John F. Kennedy, Jackie was engaged at age 22 to Wall Street banker John Husted, but she broke off the engagement after three months in 1952, reportedly finding him dull and remaining hesitant about becoming a housewife. 

She and then-Congressman Kennedy were introduced by a mutual friend at a Washington dinner party in May 1952; their relationship deepened after his election to the Senate that November, and they married on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island, before an estimated 800 guests at the ceremony and 1,000 at the reception at Hammersmith Farm. 

The couple had four children: Caroline (b. 1957), John Jr. (1960–1999), a stillborn daughter in 1956, and Patrick, who died two days after his premature birth in August 1963; Jackie also suffered a miscarriage in 1955. (3)

John and Jacqueline Kennedy at Christmas 1961

Following JFK's assassination, Jackie married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on October 20, 1968, on his private island of Skorpios, and after his death in 1975 she formed a close, lasting companionship with Belgian-American diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman, who remained at her side until her death in 1994. (10)

MONEY AND FAME Jackie became one of the most photographed and famous women on earth after her marriage to JFK, a fame that intensified enormously after his assassination and again after her controversial second marriage to Onassis in 1968, which drew heavy criticism in the American press. 

Her second marriage brought vast wealth, and after Onassis's death she inherited a $26 million settlement that Maurice Tempelsman, acting as her financial adviser, reportedly helped grow into a fortune worth roughly $200 million by the time of her death. (10), (11)

FOOD AND DRINK Jackie was famously disciplined about her diet, reportedly preferring lunches of fewer than 500 calories, often a baked potato topped with a spoonful of fresh caviar accompanied by a glass or two of champagne. (3)

MUSIC AND ARTS As First Lady, Jackie made the arts central to the Kennedy White House, hosting concerts by classical musicians such as cellist Pablo Casals and inviting poets, composers, and artists to state functions in an effort to position the United States as a cultural, not just political, leader during the Cold War. 

Her passion for historic decorative arts drove her White House restoration project, for which she assembled a Fine Arts Committee of experts including antiquarian Henry du Pont, and she later extended this cultural advocacy into New York City preservation battles. (2), (12)

LITERATURE Jackie studied French literature at George Washington University and remained an avid, serious reader throughout her life, a passion that shaped her second career. From 1975 she worked as an editor, first at Viking Press and then, from 1978 to 1994, at Doubleday, where she championed literary and historical titles, worked on several biographies of her first husband, and in 1988 edited Michael Jackson's autobiography Moon Walk. (6), (13)

NATURE Jackie developed a lifelong love of the outdoors during her Long Island and Virginia childhoods, spent among the horse country of Merrywood and Hammersmith Farm, and this affinity later drew her to build a retreat at Red Gate Farm on Martha's Vineyard, where she enjoyed walking, riding, and sailing amid open land and coastline. (14), (15)

PETS Growing up, and later as a mother, Jackie kept dogs throughout her life, including a much-loved terrier named Shannon during her White House years, reportedly one of her longest canine companions. 

As First Lady she also helped design a special play area near the West Wing for her children's menagerie of pets, which included the famous pony Macaroni, a gift to Caroline from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, alongside dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs. (16), (17)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS An accomplished equestrienne from early childhood, Jackie rode and competed in horse shows throughout her youth and continued riding as an adult. She also enjoyed sailing, water-skiing, and swimming, activities associated with the Kennedy family's active outdoor lifestyle at Hyannis Port, and in later life she took up long walks through Central Park near her Fifth Avenue apartment. (4), (10) 

Jacqueline Kennedy and her children John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy riding.

SCIENCE AND MATHS While not naturally drawn to abstract mathematics or hard sciences, she took an active interest in historic preservation science, architectural conservation, and urban planning.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Raised a Roman Catholic, Jackie remained a practicing Catholic throughout her life, a faith that shaped both her wedding to JFK at St. Mary's Church in Newport and her funeral Mass at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. 

Among her favorite literary works was the poem "Ithaca" by Constantine P. Cavafy, which Maurice Tempelsman read at her graveside, reflecting her enduring reflection on life as a meaningful journey rather than a fixed destination. (10)

FIRST LADY Jacqueline Kennedy served as First Lady of the United States from January 20, 1961, until the assassination of her husband on November 22, 1963. In less than three years, she managed to transform what was, at least on paper, a largely ceremonial position into something rather more consequential. She reshaped America's cultural image abroad, turned the White House into a serious historical institution, and became one of the most copied women on the planet—an achievement made all the more remarkable when one considers that the job came with no instruction manual, no measurable objectives and, presumably, rather a lot of people offering unsolicited advice.

Official portrait of Kennedy at the White House

When John F. Kennedy was inaugurated in January 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy was 31, making her one of the youngest First Ladies in American history. She arrived at the White House with an unusual combination of youth, elegance and formidable intellectual equipment. She spoke French, Italian and Spanish, and had even recorded foreign-language radio advertisements during her husband's 1960 presidential campaign urging voters to support him.

This was useful. America in the early 1960s was engaged in the Cold War, a period in which the world's two great powers glared at one another across oceans and continents while possessing enough nuclear weaponry to make the entire exercise seem rather unnecessarily final. Jackie Kennedy offered something different: a cosmopolitan, cultured and multilingual face of America. She could charm foreign audiences without requiring the assistance of an aircraft carrier, which was probably a welcome change.

Her most enduring accomplishment as First Lady was the restoration of the White House. Jackie had visited the presidential residence as a 12-year-old in 1941 and was disappointed by how little visitors were told about its history. When she moved into the building twenty years later, she found much the same problem on a considerably larger scale. The rooms were insufficiently documented, historically inconsistent and, to her eye, rather bland.

She decided to do something about it.

Jackie recruited interior decorator Dorothy "Sister" Parish, antiquities expert Henry du Pont and Parisian designer Stéphane Boudin, and established a Fine Arts Committee to locate museum-quality American furniture and art. The distinction she drew was important. This was not, she insisted, "redecoration." It was restoration.

"Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there," she told Life magazine. "It would be sacrilege merely to redecorate it—a word I hate. It must be restored, and that has nothing to do with decoration. That is a question of scholarship."

It was an unusually scholarly approach to interior design, and a refreshing one. Most people redecorate because they are tired of the curtains. Jackie Kennedy was prepared to summon historians.

The project reached its public climax on February 14, 1962, when CBS broadcast A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy. More than 80 million people watched as the First Lady guided them through the newly restored rooms, an audience sufficiently large to suggest that Americans had either developed a sudden passion for antique furniture or were simply curious to see what Jackie Kennedy had done with the place. The programme earned her an honorary Emmy Award.

Congress also acted to preserve the results. Public Law 87-286 formally recognised the White House as a museum and helped protect its historic state rooms from being radically altered by succeeding administrations. This ensured that future presidents could change governments, policies and occasionally the entire direction of the country without being able to replace George Washington's furniture with something from a discount showroom.

Kennedy with Charles Collingwood of CBS News during their televised tour of the restored White House 

Jackie Kennedy also made culture central to the Kennedy White House. She hosted concerts, state dinners and receptions that brought musicians, writers and artists into the presidential orbit and presented the United States as a country capable of producing more than elections, missiles and congressional hearings.

Her foreign appearances were especially successful. During a 1961 visit to Paris, she captivated enormous crowds and reportedly charmed even President Charles de Gaulle, who was not a man generally known for being easily captivated. A year later, she travelled alone on a goodwill tour of India and Pakistan, where her poise, curiosity and language skills demonstrated that she was more than simply the elegantly dressed woman standing beside the President.

She had become, in her own right, an extraordinarily effective ambassador for the United States.

Then there was the matter of clothes.

Jackie Kennedy's appearance became an international phenomenon. She popularised the bouffant hairstyle and wore tailored suits with knee-length skirts, three-quarter sleeves and clean, uncomplicated lines. Her sleeveless A-line dresses, above-the-elbow gloves and pillbox hats became so widely copied that an entire generation of women attempted to look like her, with varying degrees of success and an enormous increase in the global consumption of hats.

Collectively, these elements became known as the "Jackie look." It was elegant, modern and immediately recognisable, and it spread through the fashion world with the speed usually associated with influenza.

For all the public attention, Jackie Kennedy remained deeply involved in the lives of her children, Caroline and John Jr. She created a play area near the West Wing and filled the White House with pets, among them Caroline's celebrated pony, Macaroni, a gift from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Her family life was also marked by profound tragedy. On August 7, 1963, she gave birth prematurely to Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. He survived for only two days before dying of respiratory distress syndrome. The loss devastated the Kennedys and, by many accounts, brought the couple closer together.

It was an intensely private grief endured in the most public of circumstances, and it occurred only months before an even greater tragedy would overtake the family.

Jackie Kennedy's time as First Lady ended with shocking suddenness on November 22, 1963. She was sitting beside President Kennedy in an open limousine in Dallas when he was shot.

In the days that followed, her grief and composure were witnessed around the world. She famously refused to change out of her bloodstained pink suit before Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President, saying that she wanted "them" to "see what they've done to Jack."

It was a terrible and unforgettable image. In the space of less than three years, Jacqueline Kennedy had transformed the White House, redefined the cultural possibilities of the First Lady's role and become an international symbol of elegance and modernity. Then, in a few terrible seconds in Dallas, her public life changed forever.

The dignity she displayed in the aftermath fixed her place in history. Few First Ladies have served for so short a period and left behind such a large shadow.

POLITICS Although never a politician herself, Jackie was deeply embedded in American political life as the wife of a senator and then president, campaigning actively for JFK, including taping foreign-language radio advertisements in French, Italian, and Spanish for the 1960 election. 

When Kennedy became president on January 20, 1961, Jackie, at 31, became one of the youngest First Ladies in American history, and she used the position to advance cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. (3), (2)

SCANDAL Jackie's 1968 marriage to Aristotle Onassis, a much older, twice-divorced Greek tycoon, caused a storm of controversy and public disapproval, with many Americans feeling she had betrayed the memory of the assassinated president. 

Reports also emerged that President Kennedy himself had once ordered a Secret Service agent to keep Jackie from meeting Onassis during a 1961 trip to Greece, hinting at earlier tensions over the friendship years before the marriage. (3)

MILITARY RECORD As First Lady she nonetheless carried out ceremonial duties connected to the armed forces and was later buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery alongside her first husband. (2)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Jackie generally maintained a slim, athletic figure through horseback riding, swimming, and disciplined eating, and she was a lifelong cigarette smoker, though she largely avoided being photographed doing so in public out of image consciousness. 

In 1993 she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, for which she began chemotherapy, and her health declined rapidly over the following months. (10), (18)

HOMES Jackie's residences traced the arc of her extraordinary life: the Bouvier family estate "Lasata" in East Hampton and the Auchincloss estates of Merrywood in Virginia and Hammersmith Farm in Newport during her youth; a Georgetown townhouse and later Hickory Hill during her early marriage; the White House from 1961 to 1963; a Georgetown mansion and then a Fifth Avenue apartment in New York after 1964; and Red Gate Farm, her retreat on Martha's Vineyard. 

Her 15-room Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park remained her primary residence until her death, later shared with Maurice Tempelsman. (14), (15)

TRAVEL As First Lady, Jackie undertook celebrated foreign visits, including a hugely successful 1961 trip to France and a solo tour of India and Pakistan in 1962, both of which showcased her cultural fluency and multilingual charm on the world stage. 

In later life she traveled extensively for leisure, including sailing trips aboard the Onassis yacht Christina O and summer voyages with Maurice Tempelsman on his own vessel. (2)

DEATH Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) on May 19, 1994, at her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City, at the age of 64, with Maurice Tempelsman and her two children at her bedside. She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia beside President Kennedy and their stillborn daughter and infant son, Patrick. (3)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Jackie's most famous television appearance was her February 14, 1962 broadcast, A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy, watched by more than 80 million Americans and later honored with an Emmy Award. 

She has since been portrayed extensively in film and television, notably by Natalie Portman in Jackie (2016) and by Jacqueline Bisset, Blair Brown, and others in earlier dramatizations, cementing her status as one of the most depicted women in American popular culture.

ACHIEVEMENTS Jackie's restoration of the White House permanently transformed it into a protected historic museum rather than a house subject to the changing tastes of each administration, an achievement formalized by Public Law 87-286 in 1961. 

Later, as a private citizen, she was instrumental in saving New York's Grand Central Terminal from demolition, co-founding the Committee to Save Grand Central Station and helping carry the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in the landmark's favor in 1978 in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City; the terminal's 42nd Street entrance was later named in her honor. 

She also built a respected second career as a book editor at Viking Press and Doubleday

In 1999 she was named in Gallup's list of the Most Admired Men and Women of the 20th century.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia (2) Britannica (3) Encyclopedia of Trivia (4) Encyclopedia.com (5) White House Historical Biography (6) Timenote (7) Biography.com (8) PBS American Experience (9) LibQuotes (10) Tampa Bay Times (11) Deseret News (12) JFK Library (13) Yahoo Entertainment (14) Scene Therapy (15) Martha's Vineyard Magazine (16) Carl Anthony Online (17) Mashable (18) Nine Honey