{"id":40640,"date":"2025-10-08T15:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=40640"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:15:13","slug":"joan-bennett-kennedy-dies-at-her-boston-home-at-age-of-89-daily-mail-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=40640","title":{"rendered":"Joan Bennett Kennedy dies at her Boston home at age of 89 | Daily Mail Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of late\u00a0Massachusetts<\/a>\u00a0Senator Ted Kennedy, has died in her Boston home at the age of 89.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, born Joan Bennett, passed away peacefully in her sleep early Wednesday morning, a family spokesman confirmed.<\/p>\n

She was\u00a0was a model and classically-trained pianist when Ted’s older sister Jean Kennedy introduced the pair in 1957.<\/p>\n

They were engaged within the year and married in her hometown of\u00a0Bronxville, New York in 1958. The pair were married for 24 years and\u00a0shared three children together:\u00a0Kara, Ted Jr and Patrick.<\/p>\n

They divorced in 1983, but Kennedy was long-remembered for the struggles she endured throughout their marriage.<\/p>\n

She suffered multiple\u00a0miscarriages, including one shortly after Ted plunged a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 and killed his young, female passenger.<\/p>\n

She stood by Ted’s side as he attended the victim’s funeral, pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and as his\u00a0extramarital affairs and heavy drinking made national headlines.<\/p>\n

Kennedy battled her own demons, having fought\u00a0alcoholism<\/a>\u00a0and depression<\/a>\u00a0for many years.\u00a0She became one of the first leading ladies in America to publicly address her struggles and was\u00a0an advocate for mental health and addiction services.<\/p>\n

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Joan Kennedy in a beaded white formal dress, circa 1970<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ted\u00a0Kennedy stands to the right of his Joan Bennett at their New York wedding in 1958<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The former Joan Bennett was born in New York City on September 2, 1936. She was raised in a Roman Catholic family in the tiny suburb of\u00a0Bronxville.<\/p>\n

She met Jean Kennedy, who introduced her to Ted, while both women were studying at\u00a0Manhattanville College.<\/p>\n

Joan Kennedy was\u00a0a model and classically-trained pianist when she married Ted in 1958.<\/p>\n

But the couple’s lives changed drastically during their 15 years of marriage.<\/p>\n

Kennedy’s brother-in-law John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later.<\/p>\n

Her brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under JFK, was elected to the Senate in 1964 and assassinated while seeking the presidency.<\/p>\n

Her husband was elected to the Senate in 1962 and became among the country’s most respected legislators despite initial misgivings that he was capitalizing on his family connections.<\/p>\n

Kennedy was forced to stand by her husband as he battled scandals of his own making.<\/p>\n

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Ted\u00a0Kennedy, Joan Bennett Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, John Kennedy Jr and Caroline Kennedy are pictured together at the 1965 JFK memorial in Runnymede, Britain<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joan Kennedy is pictured leaving a lunch with Luciana Avedon, Father Francis Murphy and jewelry designer Joan Guerreiro in New York<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In 1969, the car Ted\u00a0plunged the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. His passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died in the crash.<\/p>\n

Ted, who swam to safety and waited hours before alerting police, later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident.<\/p>\n

The Chappaquiddick tragedy shadowed him for the rest of his life, weighing against his own chances for the presidency.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u00a0stood by her husband through the scandal, but their estrangement was nearly impossible to hide by the time of his unsuccessful effort to defeat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries.<\/p>\n

The couple had formally separated in 1978, but did not divorce until after Ted’s failed presidential campaign.\u00a0One bumper sticker from Carter’s campaign read ‘Vote for Jimmy Carter, Free Joan Kennedy.’<\/p>\n

Kennedy and Ted publicly announced their plans to divorce in 1981. The dissolution of their marriage was finalized nearly two years later.<\/p>\n

She never remarried, but Ted – who served as a senator until his death in 2009 – did take a second wife.<\/p>\n

He was married to\u00a0Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the current\u00a0Ambassador to the Republic of Austria, from 1990 until he passed away from a brain tumor at the age of 77.<\/p>\n

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The Kennedy\u00a0family pays tribute at Robert F Kennedy’s grave on what would have been his 47th birthday, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on November 20, 1971<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joan Kennedy, Maurice Templesman and Jackie Onassis circa 1986 in New York City<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Kennedy turned to alcohol as she tried to cope with the tragedies and scandals that plagued her very public life.<\/p>\n

In an 1978 interview with People Magazine, Kennedy admitted that she sometimes ‘drank to block out unhappiness, to drown my sorrows.’<\/p>\n

She told the outlet how she was an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and despite working the program, found that ‘staying sober is difficult.’<\/p>\n

‘But I’m sober today, and that’s all that matters. I’m working on my recovery a day at a time,’ she said in the interview.<\/p>\n

Kennedy struggled maintaining her sobriety for decades and was arrested four times for drunk driving.<\/p>\n

She was also hospitalized in March 2005 after being found sprawled out on a Boston sidewalk with a broken shoulder and concussion.<\/p>\n

She was ordered to enter an alcohol treatment program later that year and appointed a guardian to manage her personal affairs. She was also assigned two trustees to manage her estate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her three children led the calls for guardianship, with a judge ruling Kennedy was ‘incapable of taking care of herself by reason of mental illness’.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Mrs. Kennedy was a classically trained pianist, an advocate for mental health and addiction recovery, and a quiet pioneer in publicly addressing challenges with alcoholism and depression at a time when few others would,’ her son Patrick Kennedy and his wife Amy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

This is a\u00a0breaking news<\/a> story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of late\u00a0Massachusetts\u00a0Senator Ted Kennedy, has died in her Boston home at the age of 89. Kennedy, born Joan Bennett, passed away peacefully in her … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40642,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40640\/revisions\/40642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}