Joan Bennett Kennedy

Virginia Joan Kennedy ( Bennett, born September 2, 1936) is an American socialite who was the first wife of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. Early life Virginia Joan Bennett was born at Mother Cabrini Hospital in New York City. She was raised in a Roman Catholic family in suburban Bronxville, New York. Her parents were Virginia Joan Stead (1911–1976) and Harry Wiggin Bennett Jr. (1907-1981) Her father was a graduate of Cornell University and later worked as an advertising executive. She grew up with one younger sister, Candace "Candy," (born 1938). She attended Manhattanville College (then a Sacred Heart college), in Purchase, New York. Manhattanville was also the alma mater of her future mother-in-law Rose Kennedy and future sisters-in-law Jean Kennedy Smith and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. In 1982, Bennett received an MA in Education from Lesley College, now known as Lesley University. As a teenager, she worked as a model in television advertising. Marriage, family and divorce In October 1957, at the dedication of a gymnasium at Manhattanville College in memory of another Kennedy sister, Kathleen – who had died in a plane crash in France in 1948 – Jean Kennedy Smith introduced Joan to her younger brother Edward ( Ted), then a student at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. The couple became engaged quickly and Joan grew nervous about marrying someone she did not know well. Joe Kennedy insisted that the wedding should proceed, and they were married on November 29, 1958, in Bronxville, New York. The small family wedding was held just a few weeks after Ted's older brother U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy won his landslide re-election for his United States Senate seat representing Massachusetts in 1958. Joan had three children with Ted Kennedy: Kara Kennedy (1960–2011), Edward M. Kennedy Jr. (Ted Jr.) (b. 1961), and Patrick J. Kennedy (b. 1967).