Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s sophisticated style didn’t always extend to her taste in food.
Elizabeth Beller details the life of the late wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a forthcoming biography, Once Upon a Time: The Amazing Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, excerpted from this week’s issue of PEOPLE. Among the private stories of the elegant New Yorker, the author shares snippets of normalcy and connection in Carolyn’s lifestyle.
“She had one recipe … and it was how to make fried chicken, otherwise they would order,” Beller tells PEOPLE. “When they ordered, it was often Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
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Once upon a time by Elizabeth Beller.
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Carolyn’s small culinary repertoire wasn’t the result of a lack of trying, Beller explains. In the book, he reveals that the fashion icon once wanted to take cooking advice from Martha Stewart. The Los Angeles Times she reported in 1996 that she actually called on Stewart for culinary and decorating advice.
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John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty
Carolyn, a student at Boston University, moved to New York in 1989, where she began working in VIP sales for Calvin Klein. She met John at that job. The world was preoccupied with tabloid stories and paparazzi shots of Carolyn, especially after she married John in 1996. But the woman, who was 33 when she died, remains a mystery in many ways, having never given an interview.
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and JFK Jr.: Inside Their Tempestuous Love Affair and Final Days: New Book (Exclusive)
Her grace and sense of style continue to have an impact, 25 years after her death on July 16, 1999, when the plane piloted by John, 38, and carrying her sister Lauren, 34, crashed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard .
Beller hopes her book will remind people of Carolyn’s warmth and kindness.
“People wrote about her so harshly and called her icy,” says Beller, “but she was a lioness, squishy, warm and so full of life.”
Once Upon a Time: The Amazing Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller goes on sale May 21 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.
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