{"id":68049,"date":"2025-10-08T21:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/68049\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T21:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:45:10","slug":"joan-bennett-kennedy-wife-of-ted-kennedy-dies-at-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/68049\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan Bennett Kennedy, wife of Ted Kennedy, dies at 89"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of a US senator, the mother of a congressman and the sister-in-law of a slain president, has died at the age of 89, US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has said.<\/p>\n<p>A daughter of privilege who could trace her lineage back to one of the victims of the Salem witch trials, Joan Kennedy&#8217;s marriage to Edward Kennedy tied her to an American political dynasty and tumultuous personal life marred by bouts of alcoholism.<\/p>\n<p>She passed away peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday at her home in Boston, her nephew Robert F Kennedy Jr said in a social media post.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She was my friend, confidante, and my partner in recovery. Joan inspired me with her courage and humility,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\">My beloved aunt Joan Bennett Kennedy, former wife of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), classical pianist, music teacher, and advocate for mental health and addiction services, passed away peacefully in her sleep at her home in Boston, Massachusetts yesterday at the age\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/a7B145a3Ay\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/a7B145a3Ay<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RobertKennedyJr\/status\/1975982333166555553\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">October 8, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Virginia Joan Bennett was born into a wealthy Catholic family and attended the private Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in suburban New York.<\/p>\n<p>In 1958, she married Edward &#8216;Ted&#8217; Kennedy and the couple moved to Boston. In 1960, she gave birth to their first child, Kara, followed by Ted Jr in 1961 and Patrick in 1967.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband went on to serve as US senator for Massachusetts from 1962 until his death in 2009, while son Patrick would go on to become a US congressman from Rhode Island from 1995 to 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Her brother-in-law John F Kennedy, meanwhile, would become president.<\/p>\n<p>She maintained her composure in the public eye during difficult times that included the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the 1968 assassination of Edward&#8217;s brother Robert Kennedy, the US attorney general and presidential candidate.<\/p>\n<p>She suffered three miscarriages, watched her young son Ted Jr lose a leg to bone cancer, and bore her husband&#8217;s highly publicised marital infidelities.<\/p>\n<p>But by the mid-1970s, she began to speak publicly about her hospitalisations for alcoholism, which saw her arrested several times for drunken driving, and emotional distress.<\/p>\n<p>Although by then they were unofficially separated, she campaigned for her husband during his unsuccessful bid in 1980 for the Democratic Party presidential candidacy.<\/p>\n<p>Not long after announcing their divorce, her sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis told her, &#8220;I am so sorry, because now I feel I should have told you to do this 15 years ago. Then maybe you wouldn&#8217;t have gotten so sick,&#8221; according to the book &#8216;Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Joan Kennedy settled in Massachusetts, dividing her time between their home in Boston&#8217;s Back Bay and the Kennedy compound in Hyannis.<\/p>\n<p>During the 1980s, she returned to college, receiving a master&#8217;s degree in education. She slowly re-entered public life, among other things serving as head of the Boston Cultural Council and writing a guide to classical music.<\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of a US senator, the mother of a congressman and the sister-in-law&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-68049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}