John F. Kennedy's Rumored Affair Partners Have A Salacious Place In History

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Presidential affair rumors have haunted first couples for generations, but John F. Kennedy tops the list of the most prolific philanderers to have occupied the White House. Apparently, the 35th U.S. president just couldn't help it. "[If I don't] have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches," he is said to have told the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (via The Times). However, he reportedly wasn't satisfying his insatiable needs with his wife, Jackie Kennedy, to whom he was married from 1953 until his death a decade later.

JFK is rumored to have had affairs with more women than we can write about, ranging from memorable relationships to the mundane. Jackie was well aware of plenty of them. "There were many senators and people who worked for the president who were really well aware of the conversations that Jackie had with JFK, in which she made it really clear that she knew what was going on," J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of "Jackie, Janet and Lee," told People in 2018.

Jackie stood by her husband until the end, but she wasn't immune to his infidelities and considered divorce twice. "She wasn't naive to it. They did have many conversations about it, and she did tell him that she was sick of it and she didn't like it," Taraborrelli said. But times were different, and her family convinced her in both instances that it was just how men were. So, she put up with it, and tales of JFK's many affairs went down in history.

Marilyn Monroe's love life attracted intense scrutiny at a time when tabloid culture wasn't yet what it is today. But even those unfamiliar with the ultimate blonde bombshell's relationship history have heard about her rumored affair with John F. Kennedy. According to some accounts, they first met through JFK's brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, in 1954. However, speculation that they were having an affair didn't gain traction until much later, when she infamously delivered her sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at JFK's fundraiser at Madison Square Garden in May 1962. 

That was just three months before Monroe's mysterious death the following August. While rumors about what happened between JFK and the pop culture icon abound, a popular theory claims their fling boiled down to a one-night stand at Bing Crosby's house. "It was O.K. to sleep with a charismatic president, and Marilyn loved the secrecy and the drama of it," her close friend Susan Strasberg revealed in her unpublished memoir "Confessions of a New Age Heretic" (via Vanity Fair).

Others believed they were together a little more than that — four times, according to biographer Donald Spoto. But the rumors reached new heights when Monroe was linked to JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy. Proving that interest in this alleged love triangle never died, the 2022 Netflix movie "Blonde" added a new layer to the drama by claiming Monroe got pregnant by one of them, a development that many believe led the Kennedy family to murder her (via Vanity Fair). There is no evidence linking them to Monroe's death, but it goes to show the impact of the rumored affair.

The rumored affair between John F. Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer (seen above with her husband) is significant because of a letter handwritten by the former president himself. Surfaced at an online auction in Boston in 2016, the letter gave a rare insight into the playful side of JFK, known for his reservedness. "Why don't you leave suburbia for once — come and see me — either here — or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th," the letter reads (via People). "I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it — on the other hand, you may not — and I will love it."

Another significant aspect of the affair is that JFK wrote the letter just a month before his assassination in November 1963, showing he reportedly cheated on Jackie Kennedy until the very end. "You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all of these years — you should give me a more loving answer than that." He signed the four-page letter using just his first initial, J. Deemed JFK's favorite mistress, Pinchot Meyer knew the president from high school and later became close friends through their families. She and her husband, CIA agent Cord Meyer, lived near the Kennedys in Washington, D.C.

JFK and Pinchot Meyer's rumored affair also gained further notoriety because of her mysterious death. She was shot dead in October 1964, a year after her correspondence with JFK. Her murder remains unsolved and has fueled plenty of conspiracy theories — many of which involve the Kennedys.

One of the many conspiracy theories surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination involves his connections to the mob. The Chicago mob known as the Outfit is often deemed a big player in his election, with JFK's later crackdown on organized crime thought to have created tension that led to his death. These dynamics have fascinated the public for decades. And according to Judith Exner, we have her to thank for them.

In a 1988 interview with People, Exner, who claimed to have had an affair with JFK in her 1977 memoir, "My Story," said she introduced the former president to Chicago Outfit mobsters Sam Giancana and John Roselli at his request. "I was seeing them for him," she contended. "I wouldn't have been seeing them otherwise." Exner claimed to have had an affair with JFK between 1960 and 1961, during which she arranged meetings between the then-president and the Outfit bosses. Exner's name became public before she came forward with her story through her memoir, when a Senate report linked her to organized crime. 

At the time, Exner denied connecting the president with the mob, though she admitted to having a close relationship with Kennedy, Giancana, and Roselli. She lied, she said, because she was afraid. "I've gone to great lengths to keep the truth from coming out, which is probably the only reason I'm alive today," she said. She decided to come clean after learning her cancer had metastasized. "I'm terminal," she told People. She died in 1999. 

Priscilla Wear would likely have no particularly special place in history had it not been for Jackie Kennedy. A White House secretary back then, Wear's reported affair with John F. Kennedy alone was unlikely to shoot her to prominence. After all, she wasn't even known by her own name. She was more referred to by her Secret Service code name: Fiddle. She wasn't even the only secretary said to be involved with the president at the time, being one of two staffers known for traveling with JFK for no reason other than seemingly keeping him company. The other was Jill Cowen, otherwise known as Faddle.

Their sexual encounters with JFK were said to be an open secret within White House circles. That apparently included Jackie herself. While giving a tour of the White House to a French reporter with the Paris Match, she entered the office of JFK's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, only to find her assistant, Wear, sitting next to her. "Mrs. Kennedy turned to him and said, 'This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband' in French,'" former press aide in the Kennedy administration Barbara Gamarekian said in her oral history at the Kennedy Library (via Vanity Fair).

And Fiddle and Faddle weren't the only young staffers said to have had an intimate relationship with JFK during his presidency. Mimi Alford (née Beardsley) claimed she had an affair with him when she was a 19-year-old intern at the White House in 1962 – and reportedly slept with JFK in his and Jackie's bed.

If the accounts are true, John F. Kennedy didn't just have affairs with his staffers. He is also rumored to have had a long-standing relationship with Jackie Kennedy's press secretary, Pamela Turnure (seen above). The affair is said to have started in the late '50s, when Turnure worked on the staff of the then-Senator Kennedy, according to The New York Times. And it was his idea to bring her on as his wife's press secretary when he was elected president, despite her not being a journalist or having any experience dealing with the press.

She became the first person to ever serve as a first lady's press aide. Turnure's half-brother, O. Burtch Winters Drake, told the NYT that she avoided the subject but denied the relationship she had with the former president was romantic. But she was open about her admiration for JFK. "He was the most selfless person I have ever known," she said in her 1964 oral history interview.

Whether Jackie believed that Turnure had been her husband's mistress is unclear, but the two continued to work together after his assassination. Jackie undoubtedly trusted Turnure. "She answers every question exactly as I would," Jackie wrote in a letter to a friend in 1962 (via The Washington Post). "I know she will do it correctly, so we don't even communicate for weeks on end."