Carole Radziwill Reveals the Phone Call She Had With Carolyn Bessette Before the Plane Crash
Real Housewives of New York alum Carole Radziwill is speaking out about her relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in the new A&E documentary Biography: JFK Jr – The Final Year.
Carole was married to Anthony Radziwill, JFK Jr.'s cousin, until his death in 1999.
Carole claims that she and Anthony were very close with John Jr. and Carolyn, and still calls Carolyn her "best friend."
Biography: JFK Jr – The Final Year airs at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, July 16 — the 20-year anniversary of the couple's death.
Many loved John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but few knew the famous couple like Carole Radziwill did.
The former Real Housewives of New York star became well acquainted with the Kennedys because of her late husband, Anthony Radziwill, the son of Lee Bouvier Radziwill and nephew of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Carole and Anthony began seeing each other in the late '80s after meeting at ABC, where Carole worked as a reporter and Anthony as a television executive. Unfortunately, Anthony was diagnosed with cancer right before he and Carole wed in 1994.
A post shared by Carole Radziwill (@caroleradziwill) on Aug 27, 2012 at 7:26pm PDT
But well before Anthony's diagnosis, he and his first cousin JFK Jr. were "as close as brothers," according to Carole. Always playing pranks on one another, the former RHONY noted that "you never wanted to be at the other end."
"They trusted each other, they confided in each other, they teased each other, but they loved each other. The kind of love that doesn't have to express itself all the time, you just knew it," Carole says in the documentary.
The Radziwill/Kennedy bond
Anthony and John's bond started when they were children growing up together in Montauk, New York. When John and Anthony started seeing their significant others, both would insist on double dates. Soon, Carole and Carolyn formed a close bond – in fact, Carole to this day still calls the late Calvin Klein publicist "her closest friend."
As Carole revealed in her Real Housewives debut episode, her friendship with Carolyn started on a rather comical note.
“Carole, you must seriously get rid of those Gap sneakers. Our friendship cannot proceed in a growth oriented way until you realize how important this issue is to me," Carolyn wrote to Carole one day.
“It’s moments like this that I miss her the most,” Carole recalled on the Bravo show. “We would just be on the phone endlessly into the wee hours of the night talking about, ‘Can you believe this happened and then this happened?!’”
The Daily Beast reports that the Radziwills and Kennedys would often spend their weekends together in Massachusetts. And when things got especially hard for their family — Anthony's health declined, Jacqueline's death — the cousins leaned on each other more than ever.
Still, Carole claims in the A&E special that John was a bit "complicated" when it came to how he dealt with her husband's cancer.
"Based on his upbringing, what he went through, John is very stoic, so when it came to Anthony's illness, he had blinders on. And for a long time, he would not really acknowledge that Anthony was going to die from the cancer. He blocked it out for a long time. You know, ‘cause John wasn't, like, a sad person … he was, you know, buck up," she explained.
By contrast, Carolyn looked at the situation differently.
"Carolyn was the glue who kept people together. Specifically, that summer, the four of us in a difficult time," Carole wrote in a recent Daily Mail essay. "Carolyn made every day of those five years about living, not dying. She made what might have otherwise been a hopelessly grim existence, fun."
One last phone call
But everything came to a tragic end on Friday, July 16, 1999. JFK Jr., Carolyn, and her sister Lauren, died after their plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. They were on their way to John's cousin Rory Kennedy's wedding.
Right before their plane took off, Carole had one last phone call with Carolyn. Per the Daily Mail:
"Frozen in mid-conversation, we had the luxury, the last time we spoke, of talking about what we might have for dinner Sunday. It was a quick call. John was preparing to take off from a small private airport.
Anthony and I would see them, in their house on the Vineyard where we were staying, in 48 hours. The plan, for July 18, was grilled steaks and peach pie."
A post shared by Carole Radziwill (@caroleradziwill) on Mar 21, 2018 at 3:45pm PDT
Less than a month after the fatal plane crash, Anthony died of cancer on August 10.
To this day, Carole still greatly misses the couple — especially her close friend, Carolyn. In March 2018, she wrote on Instagram about Carolyn: "I was going through old photos and came upon this beautiful soul. Best friend. Best smile. Best girl. 1966-1999."
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