Discover how hard it was for Jackie Kennedy to be married to Aristotle Onassis and how much he loved Maria Callas.
- Jackie stayed for safety reasons during Onassis’ affair.
- Callas died sad because she had lost Onassis.
A Story About Love and Breach
Jackie Kennedy’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis was not a happy one, and his affair with opera star Maria Callas made things even worse.
Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos, who worked as Onassis’ personal secretary, says that the shipping magnate never stopped seeing Callas, even after he married Jackie in 1968.
“He was seeing her three or four times a week a week after they got married,” Moutsatsos said.
Jackie asked Artemis, Onassis’s sister, for help. “That’s how things usually are here in Greece,” Artemis told her, telling her to forget about the affair.
After Presidents John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were killed, Jackie took the advice and stayed in the marriage mainly to protect herself and her children, John Jr. and Caroline, emotionally and financially.
When Lives Collide
Even though they had never met, Callas and Jackie were rivals and were jealous of each other. When Onassis married Jackie, whom Callas thought was “warm and feminine,” it made the fiery and conceited Callas very angry.
Callas and Onassis often got into fights because they were rivals, which made things more tense.
At the same time, Onassis’s children, Alexander and Christina, turned their backs on Jackie totally.
Even though she tried to connect with them, they avoided her because they thought no woman could replace their mother.
The Heart of the Love Triangle
What made Jackie stay in the unhappy marriage?
- To keep her and her kids safe in the future.
- She knows what cheating is like because of her first marriage.
- Onassis’ love for her and his expensive gifts to her.
- The bond that Onassis had with her kids, John Jr. and Caroline.
An Unhappy Legacy
Onassis stayed close to Callas until his death in 1975, which made Callas very sad. After two years, she died at the age of 53 from what Moutsatsos called a “broken heart.”
In the meantime, Jackie went to New York and raised her kids there until she died in 1994.
“I just want people to know the truth,” Moutsatsos said about her plans to turn her book The Onassis Women into a movie. This was my family.”