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Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy is the elder daughter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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She was named after her great-aunt who died in a plane crash.
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She has not publicly commented on her father’s nomination for health secretary.
Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy became the latest young Kennedy to make headlines when she was linked to actor Ben Affleck last summer, but she’s more widely known as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s eldest daughter.
Kennedy Jr. could lead the Department of Health and Human Services in President Donald Trump’s new administration if he gets enough votes following Wednesday’s confirmation hearing.
Kennedy Jr. had previously announced his candidacy for president before breaking from family tradition by supporting Trump, the Republican candidate, in the 2024 presidential election.
Multiple members of his family, including his aunt Caroline Kennedy and cousin Jack Schlossberg, have publicly condemned his nomination. However, his children — he has four sons and two daughters — have not publicly commented on his nomination.
And while his eldest daughter, Kick Kennedy, has not spoken out about her father’s political ventures, she has made headlines for different reasons in recent months.
Here’s what you need to know about Kick Kennedy, a member of the newest generation of America’s most famous political dynasty.
Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy is 36 years old.
She was born in 1988 and is the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Emily Ruth Black, his first wife and the mother of his two oldest children. (RFK Jr. is now married to his third wife, Cheryl Hines.)
Kick Kennedy hasn’t commented on her father’s political endeavors, though other Kennedy family members have.
She was named after her great-aunt who died in a tragic plane crash.
Kick Kennedy’s namesake, Kathleen “Kick” Agnes Cavendish, was born in 1920. She was the daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy and the sister of John F. Kennedy.
Just months after getting married in 1944, her husband was tragically killed in combat. Following his death, she entered into a relationship with Earl Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam, a married man, People reported.
The couple planned to travel to Paris to seek her father’s approval, but their 10-seat plane encountered severe turbulence and crashed in the mountains between Paris and Cannes.
Both she and the earl, who was piloting the aircraft, died instantly. She was only 28 years old. A write-up in The Atlantic said only her father attended her funeral.
She has five siblings, four of whom are half siblings from her father’s second marriage to Mary Richardson.
The younger Kick Kennedy has one biological sibling from her father’s first marriage to Emily Ruth Black: Robert “Bobby” Kennedy III, 39.
Her half siblings include Conor Kennedy, 30; Kyra Kennedy, 29; William Finbar Kennedy, 27; and Aidan Caohman Vieques Kennedy, 23.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. married Cheryl Hines, his third wife, in 2014. They have no children together, though she has a 20-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
After her half-brother Conor was linked to Taylor Swift in 2012, Kick called the star “really sweet.”
Though the relationship was short-lived, Swift was spotted spending time with Conor and the Kennedy family at their compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in summer 2012.
“She’s really sweet. It was a moment, really,” Kick Kennedy told the New York Post in 2014 when asked what it was like for the superstar to date her brother. “But we always have exciting things going on — exciting people to meet.”
Swift and Conor Kennedy’s relationship reportedly ended in October 2012, though the fling may have inspired a few songs on her fourth studio album, “Red.”
Her own dating life has been pretty low profile.
Kick Kennedy dated Paul Simon’s son Harper in 2014, E! News reported.
She later dated Matthew Mellon, a member of the wealthy Mellon family, before he died on his way to a drug treatment facility in 2018, People reported.
Outlets reported earlier this month that she was getting to know Ben Affleck in the wake of his very public divorce from Jennifer Lopez.
Page Six reported that the two had been spotted together at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, though Affleck’s representative told People the two weren’t dating.
The rumors about Ben Affleck led the internet to discover a disturbing story Kick Kennedy once shared about her dad during an interview.
Following the reports about Affleck, people clamored to find out more about the lesser-known member of the Kennedy clan. A 2012 profile of Kick Kennedy in Town & Country included a particularly wild story about her father.
Kick Kennedy told the magazine that when she was 6 years old, her father decapitated a dead whale they’d found on a beach near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. She didn’t share why her father wanted the whale head but said he “likes to study animal skulls and skeletons.”
Problems arose when the family began making the five-hour drive from Hyannis to their home in New York with the whale head strapped to the roof of their minivan.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” she said.
She said that to deal with the leaking whale juice, “we all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out.”
“People on the highway were giving us the finger,” she added. “But that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
It’s a bizarre story, but it isn’t the only time Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been in the news for questionable behavior involving animals.
In 2014, he took a dead bear cub from the road and posed with it in a photo as a “prank.” The incident made local headlines.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’d “been picking up roadkill my whole life,” NBC reported earlier this month. “I have a freezer full of it,” he said.
She’s acted in several television shows over the years.
Kick Kennedy has appeared in several one-off episodes of popular shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Gossip Girl,” and “The Newsroom.”
She also acted in an off-Broadway play in 2014, which “Today” called a “modern retelling” of Sophocles’ “Antigone.”
“I’m really lucky,” she told The Associated Press at the time. “I’ve grown a lot just studying this part and I hope I can do it justice. I couldn’t really ask for a better story to tell right now. It’s just sort of magical that everything fell into place.”
She’s since shied away from the spotlight to focus on philanthropy.
Kick Kennedy is a member of the founders’ circle of the charity Well Beings, an organization that focuses on “the well-being of animals, people, and the planet,” according to the company’s mission statement.
While she’s a member of one of the country’s most famous and influential political families, she has spoken publicly about not wanting to rely on her pedigree to get ahead.
“People ask me, ‘What’s it like to be a Kennedy?'” Kick Kennedy said in a 2014 interview with the New York Post. “Maybe it’s just the temperature of the water, but I’m just like, ‘I have no idea.'”
“When I see my face or name in the tabloids, I get a knot in my stomach. It’s just not me — it’s reading something that’s not real,” she added.
She has, for now, a relatively modest 27,000 followers on Instagram.
Read the original article on Business Insider
