Carole Radziwill has lived through many chapters in her life, from journalist and author to being a cast member on several seasons of The Real Housewives of New York City to being an extended member of the Kennedy family (yes, as in the Kennedy family). So, how is Carole Radziwill related to the Kennedys? Well, Carole was married to her late husband, Anthony Radziwill, and he was a cousin of the Kennedy family and close to John F. Kennedy Jr.
Carole married Anthony in 1994, and they remained together until he passed away in 1999 after he lost his battle with cancer. She later chronicled this time in her life in her memoir, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love.
Young Carole Radziwill and her late husband, Anthony Radziwill’s, relationship
Carole, who worked as a news reporter early in her career, met Anthony in 1989 while they were both working at ABC News. Before marrying in 1994, Anthony was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare kind of cancer. When they wed in 1994, Carole shared that her mother-in-law, Lee Radziwill, threw the couple “an unforgettable wedding.” Anthony died in 1999, just three weeks after Anthony’s cousin, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (as well as her sister Lauren Bessette), died in a plane crash.
While on RHONY, Carole opened up about losing her husband after a decade together (in the video below). More recently, in 2023, in an interview with Mountains, Carole reflected on her time spent with her husband. “Let me be clear, I’d never want to go back to that time, but it was just this moment in time that was filled with so much success and joy and love and also heartbreak, obviously, and real tragedy,” she told the publication. “But now, today, it’s also kind of melded together into this one feeling of…well, I just feel fortunate and grateful to have experienced that life, to have been with my husband, to have had the friends that I had. I’m truly grateful.”
(You can see photos of Carole and Anthony on their wedding day here.)
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How Carole Radziwill’s apartment decor paid tribute to Anthony Radzwill’s mom, Lee
As fans will recall, Carole’s chic downtown NYC apartment once housed a vintage tiger-print couch given to her by Lee. Carole eventually had to have the couch recovered after wear and tear.
Carole Radziwill on the deaths of Anthony Radziwill, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and JFK Jr.
Over the years, Carole has opened up about her bond with Carolyn and JFK Jr., often taking fans inside her friendship with the couple during her marriage to John’s cousin, Anthony.
In 2019, on the 20th anniversary of their deaths, Carole reflected on how the loss changed her. “Nothing has changed and everything has. I left a career to start a new one, and then another. I found new friends, lost others, moved across the country, across the ocean, had crushes, love, and petty feuds. They still hold court in a nostalgic back room where they haven’t seen any of it. No milestones, no soft jokes about the inevitable slights of age,” she wrote in an essay for The Daily Mail at the time.
RELATED: What Does Carole Radziwill Do for a Living Today? Go Inside Her “Extraordinary” Career Pivot
She added, “Lives, and promise, cut short. All of them in three cruel weeks. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Lauren Bessette. And my husband, Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill. For all the time I’d had to brace myself, prepare for it, Anthony’s death, too, still seemed so abrupt and unfair, just like the others. Because … we just weren’t done.”
Carole Radziwill on the public’s fascination with JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s love story
Recently, Carole penned an essay for Town & Country in which she explained what it was like being in the orbit of John and Carolyn during her relationship with Anthony. She also touched on how the public remains interested in their story, decades after their passing. “Now we know how it ended. And yet the story keeps being told. Reinvented. Embroidered. Filled with details no one could know, by people who don’t care about the truth,” she wrote. “We think we own our stories. We don’t. Not in life, and certainly not in death. That is the quiet theft—slow at first, then at warp speed.”
RELATED: Carole Radziwill and Andy Cohen Reveal the “True Story” of How They Ended Their Feud
Wondering what Carole is up to these days? Well, she recently stopped by Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen to share new details on her life today (which you can check out in the video at the top of the post).
