Howard Stern has opened up about the time he spent with both John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette before their deaths in 1999.
The ill-fated couple are the subject of Ryan Murphy’s hit FX series Love Story: John F. Kennedy & Carolyn Bessette, which concludes Thursday.
Speaking on his eponymous radio show, Stern revealed that watching the show had brought back memories of his real-life encounters with the high-profile pair.
“I knew the real Carolyn Bessette,” the Howard Stern Show host said, per Rolling Stone. “I won’t say I knew her well, but we had many, many conversations, more than casual conversations. She was very lovely. She was like a really nice woman.”
Stern did not reveal how his friendship with Bessette began, hinting cryptically: “I know enough to keep my mouth shut about that. Some stuff you do have to keep private… But she was very nice to me, very open and talkative. She didn’t give me the nose-up-in-the air kind of thing. I don’t have any juicy, gossipy story.”
Stern also recalled that he was once the cover star for George magazine, the monthly political publication that John F. Kennedy Jr. launched in 1995.
The shock jock radio host appeared on the cover of the April/May 1996 issue, in an image that parodied the famous story about George Washington confessing to chopping down a cherry tree because he could not tell a lie. The issue‘s cover line read: “What’s so good about virtue?”
Recalling the image, Stern said: “It’s one of the worst covers I ever did, and I did a lot of bad ones. They convinced me to be chopping down a cherry tree with a chainsaw dressed up in [colonial] garb. I guess I was supposed to be George Washington, but George Washington didn’t wear this s*** I was wearing. I looked like Paul Revere in drag.”
However, he said he went along with the idea because Kennedy was “a super nice guy.” Stern recalled that Kennedy “actually showed up to the shoot” and that he and photographer Patrik Andersson were full of reassurance: “They go, ‘Gorgeous, you look great. This is the greatest cover.’”
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In hindsight, Stern isn’t so sure. “I guess I kind of look like Captain Hook or something,” he joked.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has broken streaming records for FX, becoming the network’s most-watched limited series ever on Disney+ and Hulu.
The series follows the whirlwind romance and high-profile relationship between the political heir and his publicist wife before their tragic deaths in a plane crash in 1999.
According to internal viewership data from Disney, Love Story racked up more than 25 million hours on the first five episodes alone.