On this photograph, taken in Greece on October 19th, 1968, we see a radiant and America’s once beloved Jacqueline Kennedy beside her children, John and Caroline, just one day before her controversial wedding to Aristotle Onassis. A wedding that would stun the world and transform Jackie from America’s grieving widow into the dazzling cosmopolitan Jackie O.
To bring the bride and her entourage to Greece, and according to press reports, nearly 90 passengers were reportedly removed from a fully boarded Olympic Airways flight owned by Onassis himself. The second death of Kennedy, newspapers around the globe would soon declare.
Many Americans simply could not comprehend how the refined aristocrat of the White House, the very symbol of American grace and elegance, could marry a rough-edged, stocky shipping magnate old enough to be her father. Onassis’s children from his first marriage were no less outraged than the public. They reportedly called Jacqueline the black widow.
And yet, in many ways, their union seemed almost inevitable. The widow of America’s most adored president could only marry the richest man in the world. And the richest man in the world could only marry the widow of an American president. Nothing less would have satisfied either destiny or ambition.
During those autumn days of 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy was quietly negotiating what she believed would secure her future, a prenuptial agreement destined to become one of the most legendary and controversial marriage contracts of the 20th century. To this day, no complete and fully verified version of the agreement has ever surfaced publicly.
The world has only been allowed to glimpse fragments, carefully revealed by those powerful enough to control the story. While photographers captured the romance of the wedding on the Greek island of Skorpios, fierce negotiations unfolded behind closed doors. Defending Jackie’s interests with unmistakable determination was the lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy.
In the original agreement, Kennedy reportedly secured a one-time payment of $1.5 million for Jackie in exchange for her waving any future claim to the vast Onassis fortune should the shipping titan die first. But Jacqueline’s sharp-minded stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss, urged her to demand more. Soon negotiations drew in one of the most influential men on Wall Street, the Kennedy family’s trusted financial advisor, Andre Meyer, often called the Picasso of the banking world.
According to documents that surfaced decades later, the final settlement increased Jackie’s compensation to $3 million, the equivalent of roughly $30 million today. Reports from the New York Times, various biographers, and inheritance settlement documents suggest that the agreement also established trust fund for John F. Kennedy Jr.
and Caroline Kennedy, approximately $1 million each with annual interest payments directed to Jacqueline Kennedy herself. In addition, she was guaranteed around $150,000 a year in the event of divorce or the death of Aristotle Onassis. For the late 1960s, these were staggering amounts of money. Though beside the immense wealth of Onassis, whose fortune stretched into the hundreds of millions, the number seemed almost modest.
“Do you think this is a lot?” Onassis supposedly asked his secretary, Lynn Alpha Smith, before signing the contract. “Not really,” she allegedly replied. “You could buy a tanker for that amount. But with a tanker, you’d still have to pay insurance.” From then on, people in Onassis’s inner circle reportedly nicknamed Jackie the supertanker.
Onassis spent no less than $600,000 a year on travel, security, entertainment, and living expenses for Jacqueline and her children. Not counting the jewels, lavish gifts, and extraordinary luxury that quickly became her new normal. What Onassis failed to anticipate, however, was that this impeccably mannered and elegantly reserved woman had absolutely no intention of living within a monthly allowance of $30,000.
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Every bill eventually found its way to his New York office. Blinded, perhaps, by love, Onassis seemed to forget that even during the Kennedy presidency, the first lady had become famous for spending more on her wardrobe each year than her husband earned as president. “Where does she put all of it? All day long I only see her in sweaters and jeans,” Onassis reportedly complained.
The daughter of a millionaire, the wife of a multimillionaire, and later a billionaire, Jackie belonged to a world where money and power were treated almost as forms of royalty. To her credit, she knew how to surround both with sophistication and style. Her near-clinical habit of spending millions seemed beyond discussion.
And Onassis believed he needed precisely such a woman and was willing to pay the price for her presence. According to the New York Times in an interview with Christian Cafarakis, former chief steward of the yacht Christina, the marriage contract between Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy was so extraordinarily detailed that it reportedly contained nearly 170 clauses.
Cafarakis claimed the agreement was designed to ensure that Mrs. Onassis would always be protected for financial hardship. The contract allegedly even required separate bedrooms and specified how much time the couple was expected to spend together each year. It also reportedly included Jackie’s promise not to have more children.
Clause 23 said, “Jacqueline Kennedy agrees to marry Aristotle Onassis on the express condition that he will not demand that she gives him a child.” And indeed, the marriage often resembled a union of two people living parallel lives. In New York, Jackie preferred her Fifth Avenue apartment, while Onassis frequently stayed nearby at the Hotel Pierre.
In March 1975, Aristotle Onassis died in a clinic outside Paris from bronchial pneumonia. According to persistent rumors, Jacqueline’s very first call after hearing the news was to one of the world’s most expensive fashion designers to order a mourning dress. Representing the Kennedy family at the funeral was Senator Ted Kennedy, who reportedly became the first to raise the issue of Jackie’s inheritance rights.
Eventually, the Onassis family paid Jacqueline settlement of $26 million on the condition that she would never challenge them again. Aristotle Onassis was buried beside his son on his private island of Skorpios. Three years after the death of her second husband, America’s most famous widow began a long relationship with her long-time companion Maurice Tempelsman, a wealthy diamond merchant with South African business interests.
Like Onassis, he was short and stocky. He was Jacqueline’s contemporary, though he appeared older than his years. Loved Dunhill cigarettes and was, once again, enormously wealthy. This is what we call life. Strange, controversial, not as simple as black and white, not simple at all, hard for every of us in all imaginable ways.
And often we are just spectaculars of our own path, cannot change a dime of it with all desire. How many of us experience a beloved husband’s blood during assassination? How many lost children? How many were at the absolute political alum? And how many did not want to have a support in difficult situation? So, we’re not in position to judge anyone.
Just been lucky enough to understand our own path. Hope you are with me and like this recollection. And if so, subscribe. Stay with me and expect another touching story.
