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Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ Younger Sister, Dies At 85
The fashion world lost a style icon. Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of late former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, passed away on Friday, February 15, according to WWD. Radziwill died in New York City at 85 years old.
Radziwill was born Caroline Lee Bouvier on March 3, 1933, and she lived quite a life as an interior decorator and a socialite. She was also related to one of the most popular political families in American history, had tons of famous friends, she was once married to a prince and she was also the mother-in-law of Real Housewives of New York City star Carole Radziwill.
Lee Radziwill and Jackie Onassis during Sighting After Leaving Performance at Alvin Theatre – May 11, 1970 at Alvin Theatre in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)
Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her late husband John F. Kennedy named their daughter, Caroline Kennedy, after Radziwill. Radziwill was married three times, her first husband was a publishing executive named Michael Temple Canfield from 1953 to 1959. She married her second husband, Polish aristocrat Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill, in 1959 and the couple went on to have two children together: Prince Anthony and Princess Christina. The couple would later divorce in 1974. In 1988, she married American film director Herbert Ross but they divorced in 2001.
Razdiwill’s son, Anthony Radziwill, married Carole in 1994. But tragedy hit the Radziwill family in 1999 when Anthony died after a long battle with cancer. In a 2017 interview on Sarah Brokaw’s “Shared Secrets” podcast, the RHONY star revealed that Anthony was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, right before their wedding. The 55-year-old explained why she and Anthony decided to keep it a secret.
“[Cancer] was seen as a death sentence. So it’s not something that you wanted to talk about,” Carole said. “No one would talk about it openly, even though there was many, many, many treatments and there were a lot of cures also for different cancers. But still it was that lingering thing, like, ‘Oh, you have cancer.’ And it was always said with a whisper. Still, even today it is, which is just interesting. That became our secret.”
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