Joan Bennett Kennedy

Joan Bennett Kennedy (born September 9, 1936) is an American is the former wife of U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Edward "Ted" Moore Kennedy. She was born Virginia Joan Bennett in Riverdale, a neighborhood of The Bronx borough of New York City, New York, to Henry Wiggin Bennett, Jr., an advertising executive and Virginia Joan (née Stead) Bennett. Both of her parents were alcoholics. She attended Manhattanville College (then a Sacred Heart college), in Purchase, New York; Manhattanville is also the alma mater of Jean Kennedy Smith and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, her future sisters-in-law. As a teenager, she worked as a model in television advertising. In October 1957, at the dedication of a gymnasium at Manhattanville College in memory of another Kennedy sister, Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington — who had died in a plane crash in 1948 — Jean Kennedy introduced Joan to her brother Ted, then a student at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. They were...