After the assassination and funeral of her husband, Kennedy and her children retired from public life. In 1968, she married Greek businessman Aristotle Onassis, which made her less popular. After Onassis's death in 1975, she had a career as a book editor in New York City, first at Viking Press and then at Doubleday. Even after her death, she is seen as one of the most popular and well known first ladies in American history. In 1999, she was listed as one of Gallup's Most-Admired Men and Women of the 20th century. She died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1994 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to President Kennedy.
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929 in Southampton, New York, to Wall Street stockbroker John Vernou "Black Jack" Bouvier III and socialite Janet Norton Lee. Her mother was of Irish descent and her father had French, Scottish, and English ancestry. She was raised as a Roman Catholic. She had a sister, Caroline Lee, who was born four years later on March 3, 1933.
Kennedy Onassis spent her early childhood years in Manhattan and at the Bouviers' country estate in East Hampton on Long Island. She admired her father and Bouvier III called his oldest daughter "the most beautiful daughter a man ever had".
From an early age, Kennedy Onassis was an equestrienne who competed in the sport. She took ballet lessons and learned many languages, speaking English, French, Spanish, and Italian. In 1935, she began going to Manhattan's Chapin School, which she attended for Grades 1–7. One of her teachers called her "a darling child, the prettiest little girl, very clever, very artistic, and full of the devil".
The marriage of her parents became worse because of her father's alcoholism. Her parents had financial problems caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929. They separated in 1936 and divorced four years later. In 1942, her mother married lawyer Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Jr. and the family would move into his McLean, Virginia home.
After seven years at Chapin, Kennedy Onassis went to Holton-Arms School in Washington, D.C., staying from 1942 to 1944, and Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, from 1944 to 1947. In 1947, she began studying at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She spent her junior year in France at the University of Grenoble in Grenoble, and at the Sorbonne in Paris in a study-abroad program through Smith College. She transferred to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature in 1951. She later went to George Washington University to take educational classes on American history.
While at George Washington University, Kennedy Onassis won a twelve-month junior editorship at "Vogue" magazine allowing her to work for six months in the magazine's New York City office and spending the remaining six months in Paris. The trip was the reason why she wrote her only autobiography, "One Special Summer". After "Vogue", she began working for the "Washington Times-Herald", where editor Frank Waldrop hired her as a part-time receptionist. In 1952, she was briefly engaged to a young stockbroker named John Husted and broke-off the engagement because he was "boring".
Kennedy Onassis first met U.S. Representative John F. Kennedy after being introduced by journalist Charles L. Bartlett, at a dinner party in May 1952. Both had many things in common such as their Catholicism, writing, enjoyment of reading and having lived abroad. Kennedy was busy running for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts when they first met. Their relationship became more serious and he proposed to her after the November election. Bouvier took some time to accept, because she had been asked to cover the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London for "The Washington Times-Herald". After a month in Europe, she returned to the United States and accepted Kennedy's marriage proposal and their engagement was officially announced on June 25, 1953.
They were married on September 12, 1953 in Newport, Rhode Island by Boston's Archbishop Richard Cushing. The wedding was seen as a the social event of the season with about 700 guests at the ceremony and 1,200 at the reception. In the first years of their marriage, the couple had many problems. John Kennedy was diagnosed with Addison's disease and chronic back pain caused by a war injury. In late 1954, he had surgery on his spine which almost killed him. Kennedy Onassis suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and in August 1956 gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Arabella. They lived in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and Boston, Massachusetts.
Kennedy Onassis gave birth to their daughter Caroline on November 27, 1957. During his senate re-election campaign, John Kennedy began to see how popular his wife was and added her to his congressional campaign. In November 1958, John was re-elected to a second term in the Senate and he thanked his wife's appearances at events and called her "simply invaluable". In 1959, Kennedy Onassis stayed at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts caring for Caroline while her husband began raising money for a possible presidential campaign in Louisiana.
On January 3, 1960, John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency. In the early months of the election year, Kennedy Onassis traveled with her husband to campaign events. Shortly after the campaign began, she became pregnant, however. She decided to stay at home in Georgetown during most of her husband's campaign to avoid risks in her pregnancy. She took part of her husband's campaign by writing a weekly newspaper column, "Campaign Wife", answering questions and giving interviews to the media.
Despite her non-participation in the campaign, Kennedy Onassis became had a large amount of media attention because of her fashion choices. While her fashion choices made her popular, many criticized her for being wealthy. In order to avoid focus on her wealthy past, Kennedy Onassis talked about the amount of work she was doing for the campaign and did not want to talk about her clothing choices.
On July 13, 1960 at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, John F. Kennedy was nominated for president. Kennedy Onassis did not go to the convention because of her pregnancy. She was in Hyannis Port where she watched the September 26, 1960 debate, which was the nation's first televised presidential debate, between her husband and Republican candidate and Vice President Richard Nixon. Her husband would go on to be elected the 35th President of the United States, after winning the presidential election by a narrow margin in November. A little over two weeks after the election, on November 25, Kennedy Onassis gave birth to the couple's first son, John F. Kennedy, Jr.
John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president on January 20, 1961. Kennedy Onassis did not want her children to be unprotected around the media at an early age, so she stayed with them in Middleburg, Virginia for a short time. She was the first presidential wife to hire a press secretary. Pamela Turnure, carefully managed her contact with the media. The media saw Kennedy Onassis as the "ideal woman" and she got worldwide positive public attention and gained allies for the White House and international support for the Kennedy administration and its Cold War policies.
Although Kennedy Onassis said that her main focus as the First Lady of the United States was to take care of the President and their children, she also dedicated her time to support American arts and preservation of its history. The restoration of the White House was her main contribution. She was also known for hosting many social events from politics and the arts. One of her goals that she was unable to reach was to create a Department of the Arts, but she did help create the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.