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At 22, Jackie was in no way a journalist, what with her ineptness at Q&A repartee and her whispery, little-girl voice, but still she made a success of it. Image counted a lot. Who could resist this willowy, wide-eyed girl with her clumsy hold on the camera and her wavy hair pulled back into a businesslike bun?
The next year she met her fate at a dinner party given by Charles Bartlett, a Washington journalist and socialite, and his wife Martha. The Bartletts were in a matchmaking mood and invited their old friend Jack Kennedy, then 34, a handsome, ambitious Congressman from Massachusetts. The introduction took. They dated, and he proposed by telephone to London, where she was snapping the coronation of Elizabeth II. "Jackie fell for him," says an old friend, "but she was amused by the situation too. After the engagement, she said she never knew she had so many friends."
From the start, marriage to Jack was not easy for Jackie. There were problems -- his wandering eye, her clothing bills -- but mostly the trouble was that he was constantly running for President. Jackie got what she wanted in that her husband was wealthy, but she had hoped for a life of comfort and perfection in a private world. Faced with a vast, unruly public, she may have fallen back on her father's injunction that an attractive woman should be mysterious, always holding something back to keep people guessing. Jack would take her to parties and then leave her alone while he worked the room. In response she developed her famous I'm-here-but-I'm-reall y-not-here approach to the world. More often than not, she answered questions with her dazzling smile -- period.
She wanted children, and suffered through a miscarriage and the birth of a stillborn baby. Caroline was born in 1957. John Jr. was born in 1960. When she was later asked which First Lady she admired most, her reply was surprising -- Bess Truman. And the reason: her sensible way of bringing up her daughter Margaret in the White House glare.
By 1960 there were visible cracks in the marriage and gossip about J.F.K.'s supposed affairs. At one point Joseph Kennedy offered Jackie a million dollars not to leave Jack, and reportedly she took it. The presidency did not initially improve matters. For one thing, she disliked the White House. "Like a hotel," she complained to TIME's Hugh Sidey, "everywhere I look there is somebody standing around or walking down a hall."
She made peace with the problem by asserting her own aesthetic. She had a stage built and invited performers like cellist Pablo Casals and the American Ballet Theatre -- a glamorization of politics that was unprecedented. More important, she redid the place, replacing routine reproductions with authentic period pieces and fabrics. In behalf of her cause, she was able to put aside her shyness and skillfully persuade rich collectors to part with their treasures in the name of history. The redecoration was a triumph celebrated on TV when the First Lady led correspondent Charles Collingwood through the rooms and explained her inspirations. Eighty million people tuned in.