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John F. Kennedy Jr. had a lot on his mind.

The 33-year-old law school grad had recently quit his job at the district attorney’s office and was trying to start his own magazine. His mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and his best friend, cousin Anthony Radziwill, were diagnosed with cancer in the same month. And he was in a tumultuous relationship with Daryl Hannah, the sultry star of the mermaid movie “Splash” and the daughter of a billionaire.



Yet, Kennedy could not stop thinking about Carolyn Bessette, a 28-year-old blonde who worked in fashion. He had met her about a year and a half ago and had dated her on and off — mostly off — since then. But he admitted to an old friend that she was “having a heavy effect on him.

” “Well, she’s not really anybody,” he said when this pal pressed him for more details. “She’s some functionary of Calvin Klein’s ..

. She’s an ordinary person.” Bessette was not rich, not famous, not from an esteemed family nor Ivy League school.

Yet this “ordinary” woman ended up snagging JFK Jr., America’s prince, the second son of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie and — per People magazine — the “sexiest man alive.

” They married in 1996. Their wedding, on a remote island off the coast of Georgia, was like something out of a fairy tale. Except, as Elizabeth Beller writes in her new book, “ Once Upon A Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy ” (Gallery Books, out now), it was more li.

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