All The Men Jackie Kennedy Dated Before And After JFK

In 1952, photographer and journalist Jacqueline "Jackie" Lee Bouvier became acquainted with Senator John F. Kennedy, and he was exactly the kind of man her family would approve of; smart, successful, and handsome. The two quickly fell for one another and became engaged in June 1953. Just days before they announced their engagement, the Saturday Evening Post released an article about JFK, stating, "Many women have hopefully concluded that Kennedy needs looking after. In their opinion, he is, as a young millionaire senator, just about the most eligible bachelor in the United States." However, Jackie had already staked her claim on the young senator, and they married in September of the same year.

The Kennedys' relationship was national news, and when JFK announced his run for the presidency, his supportive wife was by his side. In 1961, following a successful candidacy, Jackie Kennedy moved into the White House and became both the First Lady of the United States and the woman every housewife aspired to be. She was a classy style icon with a devotion to the arts, and she had the most famous man in the country on her arm.

This is how most people remember Jackie Kennedy. However, only a decade of her life was spent with JFK before he was assassinated, and there were certainly other men in her life who made an impact. Here are all the men Jackie Kennedy dated before — and after — JFK.

Jackie Kennedy came from a wealthy family and greatness seemed likely for the Bouvier sisters from early on. Several years before she ever saw John F. Kennedy as a future beau, she spent her junior year of college in Paris, France. Venturing out and finding her independence in the city of love, it's no wonder that she fell head over heels while abroad — and with the son of a French novelist, no less. John P. Marquand Jr. (called Jack by his friends) was an American living in Paris and had already gone to Harvard and served in the military.

In 2018, author J. Randy Taraborrelli released a tell-all book about the Bouvier women, "Jackie, Janet & Lee," which included intimate details about Jackie's love life. He spoke to People about the full scope of her relationship with Marquand, saying, "Jackie, when she was a teenager, lost her virginity to somebody in Paris in an elevator. It wasn't the most romantic experience but it was a good one for her and she was really happy that she had it." Apparently, she had confided in her sister Lee about her rendezvous with Marquand, not wanting her parents to find out. But Lee ended up spilling the secret to Janet Auchincloss (née Bouvier) anyway to win brownie points with their mother. Janet forbade Jackie from seeing Marquand again, and their romance quickly fizzled out.

Jackie Kennedy may have had a soft spot for guys named John, because her second serious relationship was with John Husted Jr, and she nearly married him before she met JFK. Husted was a Wall Street stockbroker who had graduated from Yale and had connections in high places, so he seemed like a safe bet to settle down with. However, her mother, Janet Bouvier was skeptical of Husted's ability to provide for Jackie, as he told Vanity Fair in 1999. "Her mother deemed me no great catch. Janet asked me how much money I was making, and I told her $17,000 ... Consequently, she was vehemently opposed to the match."

Jackie's family was known to value success and protect themselves financially whenever possible, and for Janet, it was of huge importance that her daughters chose their spouses carefully. Author J. Randy Taraborrelli gave further explanation to People about the events that transpired following Janet's discovery of Husted's salary. "Janet told her 'That was less money than your father made when I married him,'" Taraborrelli recounted. Janet reportedly told her daughter to leave Husted at their engagement party, which she did, by dropping the engagement ring into his jacket pocket.

There was just one other man in Jackie Kennedy's life before she decided to settle down with John. F. Kennedy. Ormande de Kay was an American Jackie had spent time with in Paris, and she had agreed to marry him upon his return from the Korean War. However, the soon-to-be First Lady was swept off her feet by JFK before de Kay returned from the war, so she decided to pen a letter breaking things off. "I want you to be the first to know that I've found the love of my life, the man I want to marry. I am now engaged to John F. Kennedy," she wrote to de Kay.

When her previous beau John Husted Jr caught wind of his ex-fiancé's engagement, he said (via Daily Mail), "I found out why Jackie had really called off the wedding. She'd taken up with this ... red-haired Irish politician from Boston." While the timeline may be a little fuzzy, it seemed that JFK was always going to win over Jackie's heart in the end.

While they seemed like the perfect couple at first, it's long been rumored that John F. Kennedy was far from a faithful husband to Jackie Kennedy. JFK allegedly had several affairs, including his most infamous affair with the iconic Marilyn Monroe, as well as ones with several of his female White House staff members. However, Jackie wasn't exactly Miss Fidelity herself— she reportedly indulged in her fair share of side romances during her marriage to the 35th president.

Not long after Monroe performed "Happy Birthday Mr. President," which sparked conjecture around JFK's fidelity, Jackie reportedly had a brief affair at her home in Virginia with André Malraux, a French art theorist and the author of "La Condition Humaine." The pair had previously established a friendship when the Kennedys visited Paris together in 1961, and because Jackie had spent time there in college, spoke French fluently, and was passionate about French art and history, she and Malraux had a lot in common. Letitia Baldridge, Jackie's social secretary, noted (via Vanity Fair) that, "She listened to him and wrote to him. Malraux was her prize." Jackie had such influence over Malraux that he agreed to send the priceless Mona Lisa to be displayed in Washington, D.C., temporarily, because she wished to share French art with America.

Another not-so-secret aspect of Jackie Kennedy's life was that she was smitten with more Kennedy men than just John F. Kennedy, and had several alleged affairs with her husband's brothers. After JFK was assassinated in November 1963, Jackie was never the same, having lived through the harrowing shooting of her husband. Reportedly, it was just 6 months after JFK's death that Jackie began having an affair with his younger brother, Robert "Bobby" F. Kennedy, who was married and the father of 11 children.

In her memoir "Jackie's Girl," Jackie's personal assistant, Kathy McKeon, reflected on why she thought the two got together. "Loss is a terrible love. No matter how much sympathy you have, it's a kind of pain that can only be felt, not imagined ... I could see plain as day that this awful shared knowledge was what made the president's widow and younger brother care for each other the way they did."

According to C. David Heymann's book "Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story," Bobby's wife Ethel seemed to be clued into their romance and would leave the room whenever Jackie visited. Family friend Chuck Spalding confided in Heymann, "You had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see it." Sadly, after winning the California primary in June 1968, Bobby was fatally shot, and it was Jackie, not Ethel, who ultimately decided to pull the plug on his life support.

As Jackie Kennedy was planning John F. Kennedy's memorial following his death, she fell into her next relationship with an architect named John "Jack" Warnecke. They had met previously in 1962 when he was commissioned to save some of the historical buildings in Washington, D.C., but they reunited when Jackie asked Warnecke to design JFK's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

In 2018, author of "Jackie, Janet and Lee," J. Randy Taraborrelli, told People, "Jack felt that Jackie desperately wanted to land somewhere and she cared for him and he provided a safe haven away from the nightmares and the PTSD that she was still experiencing over Jack [Kennedy] and Bobby." He added that it was unlikely the two would have ever gotten married, although they did discuss it in 1966 while on vacation together. "I don't think it was as serious for her as it was for him," Taraborrelli surmised.

Jackie's goals for her romantic life hadn't changed much since she was a girl, and a man's financial security was still a prominent factor for her. Unfortunately for Warnecke, while he had a steady job as an architect, he was $650,000 in debt. After reportedly sharing his money woes with Jackie, she distanced herself and, according to Taraborrelli, she told her mother about the situation. Janet Auchincloss told her daughter, "This is not the man for you," and Jackie's relationship with Warnecke ended shortly thereafter. But it wasn't long before JFK's widow set her sights on someone new.

Jackie Kennedy's alleged affairs were with some of the most famous men of her time, as her beauty and notability made introductions easy. Some of her notable paramours included heartthrobs like Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, William Holden, Peter Lawford, and Marlon Brando.

Before Brando's autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" was edited, there was a lengthy description he'd written about his encounter with Mrs. Kennedy. It read: "She kept waiting for me to try to get her into bed. When I failed to make a move, she took matters into her own hands and popped the magic question, 'Would you like to spend the night'? I said, 'I thought you'd never ask.'"

However, where countless women would have swooned at the opportunity to go to bed with Hollywood's most attractive men, Jackie wasn't always impressed by her celebrity flings. She spent a few months dating Warren Beatty, known for his 1991 film "Bugsy" and 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde." Jackie thought of him as too conceited and found his relentless chatter about Hollywood disinteresting. When a friend asked her how Beatty was between the sheets, Jackie reportedly said, "Oh, he's fine. Men can only do so much, anyway." Author J. Randy Taraborrelli told People, "When it was over [with Beatty], Jackie said it lasted two weeks longer than it should have."

After Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Jackie Kennedy had lost two lovers and two Kennedys, and she began to rely on the company of Edward "Teddy" Moore Kennedy. He was the youngest of JFK's brothers and, like Bobby, was married with children at the time their alleged affair began.

Writers Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince released "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Life Beyond Her Wildest Dreams" in 2014, in which they stated, "Teddy stood by Jackie through one crisis after another, becoming the one man in her life she could depend on." The youngest Kennedy brother had even told JFK's assistant David Powers, "I've always been in love with Jackie, right from the beginning." It was reported that Teddy was envious of the relationship Bobby had with Jackie and that he even married his wife Joan because she had a likeness to her.

Before Bobby's death, Jackie had allegedly told writer Truman Capote of the love triangle she found herself in, claiming, "I'm in love with two men at the same time, both Bobby and Teddy." Eventually, she learned that Teddy was having other affairs, so she allegedly began seeing the man who would become her next husband behind his back.

In November of 1967, before Jackie Kennedy got married for the second time and changed her last name to Onassis, she had the attention of another man. David Ormsby Gore, Lord Harlech, was a former British ambassador to Washington, an aristocrat, and a good friend of John F. Kennedy. He and Jackie found common ground as recent widows, and after a few months, Ormsby Gore proposed to her. But because he wasn't her only or best option, she ultimately decided against marrying him.

A month after marrying Aristotle Onassis, Jackie wrote a letter to Ormsby Gore (via the New York Times) explaining why she had chosen another man. "Please know — you of all people must know it — that we can never really see into the heart of another ... [Mr. Onassis is] lonely and wants to protect me from being lonely. And he is wise and kind." Jackie made her choice clear, so the Lord appeared to let her go. The following year, Ormsby Gore married Pamela Colin, who bore more than a slight resemblance to JFK's widow.

The Kennedy brothers weren't the only family to have romantic partners in common — Jackie Kennedy's second husband, Aristotle Onassis, was actually her sister Lee's ex-boyfriend. Jackie first met the Greek business magnate in 1963 when Lee invited her on a cruise with Onassis. However, as a source told Harper's Bazaar, "I think when Lee looks back on this trip she believes it was the second biggest mistake she ever made."

Five years later, Onassis was single and had invited Jackie on a cruise where they began to plan their future together. According to a friend of his who was also on the boat, "There were no endearments or touching or anything like that. I was absolutely convinced that nothing had gone on while we were there. I think in the afternoons they spent an hour or two together and they were sort of working out some sort of agreement." Onassis ended up proposing to Jackie on the trip and, given his fortune, security team, and willingness to protect her, she agreed. Still, she kept the news from her family until right before the wedding. In fact, Onassis had been the one to break the news of their engagement to her sister Lee.

However, Jackie's second marriage was less than ideal, and the couple had little in common. He eventually died in 1975, and the widow has since been endearingly referred to as "Jackie O."

There was one last man in Jackie Kennedy's life after the death of Aristotle Onassis. Maurice Tempelsman was a Belgian-American diamond merchant whose family had fled the Nazis in 1940 and wound up in Manhattan. He and his family built their own business and, in time, Tempelsman became exorbitantly wealthy.

She and Tempelsman met in the late '50s when he arranged a meeting between John F. Kennedy and representatives of the South African diamond industry. After Aristotle Onassis died in 1975, Jackie moved to New York and struck up a relationship with the diamond merchant, though he was married at the time. Tempelsman eventually left his wife for Jackie O. and the couple lived happily in the widow's Fifth Avenue apartment. Those close to the couple have said they seemed truly in love, and that she had much more in common with Tempelsman than she ever did with Onassis.

Tempelsman remained by Jackie's side after her cancer diagnosis and was a constant support throughout her treatment. One of her doctors said (via People), "The level of love and respect was amazing to see. He was always holding her hand or caressing her cheek, and when they sat their heads were always close together, like a sweet older couple." Although they were married, Jackie and Tempelsman were together for an astonishing 12 years. And when she died in May 1994, he recited a eulogy in the form of a Greek poem, "Ithaka," to express his love for her.