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Then the couple had their first dance. The song they chose was Forever in My Life by the artist formerly known as Prince. "There comes a time," the lyrics run, "in ev'ry man's life/ When he gets tired of foolin' around/ Juggling hearts in a three- ring circus/...Forever, forever, baby, I want U forever./ I wanna keep U 4 the rest of my life." Not Ira Gershwin exactly but an apt and amusing sentiment.
Who is the woman who captured the heart of John Kennedy, a man whose combination of looks, wealth, pedigree and ease of manner exceeds that of any prince? Friends quoted in the press say Bessette is hip and determined, a natural socializer who knows how to get what she wants. But she is also a likable, kind human being, they say. She was raised in affluent Greenwich, Connecticut. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and Bessette grew up with her mother, a school administrator who eventually was remarried to a prominent doctor. Bessette attended a Catholic high school and went on to Boston University, where she majored in elementary education.
After graduating, she worked in marketing for a company that owned a string of nightclubs throughout New England. Then she moved to a job with a Calvin Klein store in Boston. She was spotted by some Calvin Klein executives and brought down to the main office in New York City, where she became a publicist. Six feet tall, willowy and beautiful, Bessette was no wallflower. In college, she went out with an heir to the Benetton fashion fortune; before she started seeing Kennedy, her boyfriend was Michael Bergin, a Calvin Klein underwear model. She quickly impressed Klein and his wife Kelly, according to W, the fashion-industry trade magazine. She was also, says W, known to get into screaming matches with colleagues over decisions and to win.
It has been a matter of dispute, but now scholars of the subject agree that Bessette and Kennedy first met in 1992, when he chatted her up one day in Central Park as she was running. At the time, he was seeing actress Daryl Hannah. Shortly afterward, Kennedy appeared at Calvin Klein. One of Bessette's tasks was to help celebrities do their shopping, and she was given the Kennedy assignment. That day he bought three suits.
Kennedy did not break up with Hannah until after his mother's death, in the spring of 1994. Kennedy and Hannah had been together for more than five years, although it was said that his mother disapproved of the match. Sometime in 1993, before he split with Hannah, Kennedy and Bessette began seeing each other. In 1995 she moved into Kennedy's loft in TriBeCa, a trendy area of downtown Manhattan.
In February their lovers' quarrel in Central Park was captured on an amateur's videotape, which tabloid TV shows replayed over and over again. Yelling, Bessette and Kennedy shoved each other, and he took a ring (possibly an engagement ring) from her finger. Before he stalked off, he also tried to grab the dog they owned together, but she screamed, "You've got my ring--you're not getting my dog!" What the TV clip usually did not include was the reconciliation, which occurred within minutes of the fight. The pair kissed and were seen together the next night at a dinner.