Bombshell JFK Book Finds ‘Wild’ Romance with Flight Attendant Joan Lundberg — Together with Her Being pregnant and What Jackie Knew (Uncommon)

NEED TO KNOW

• A bombshell fresh e-book, JFK: Public, Personal, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli, comes out July 15 and PEOPLE has an fresh first excerpt

• It unearths that JFK had an affair with a flight attendant named Joan Lundberg, ensuing in her pregnancy

• Below, be taught what took place — and the intention Jackie reacted to her husband’s affairs

Joan Lundberg became once “one of a form,” says her son Zachary Hitchcock. “She became once unconventional and self reliant — a voluptuous beauty with a enormous smile.”

In step with a bombshell fresh biography, JFK: Public, Personal, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli, the young flight attendant met JFK in 1956 when he became once a senator from Massachusetts — and married. It’s fairly of-acknowledged chapter in the lifetime of the thirty fifth president and might per chance well well need remained that intention were it no longer for Lundberg’s family, who shared her unpublished memoir and personal diaries with Taraborrelli.

For more on JFK and Joan, get the most fresh reveal of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

The creator tells her account in detail for the first time in his fresh e-book, a apply-up to his 2023 biography, Jackie: Public, Personal Secret. Says Taraborrelli, “With this e-book, I wished no longer to defend JFK nonetheless I wished to expose him.”

“Joan became once a enormous revelation for me,” the creator provides. “She acted as his therapist in loads of ways. Because she became once outside of his Washington circle, he opened up to her — and began to reckon with his flaws.” By weaving Lundberg’s account and parts of her manuscript into his fresh e-book, he says, “You’re left with a portrait of a essentially attention-grabbing woman.”

Be taught more below, in an excerpt from JFK: Public, Personal, Secret shared exclusively with PEOPLE.

On August 19, 1956, the senator from Massachusetts met Joan Lundberg, 23, standing in front of the jukebox at The Sip and Surf, a dive bar in Santa Monica, Calif. “What are you gonna play?” he asked her. “I became once pondering Elvis Presley, nonetheless what would you are trying to listen to?” she asked. He acknowledged he wished to listen to something “so I’m in a position to pay consideration on you.” Corny, nonetheless no longer unhealthy.

Joan, a single mom of two, became once then residing with a man named Norm Bishop and working as a flight attendant for Frontier Airlines (and as a cocktail waitress on the aspect).

When Jack asked where she lived, she told him it became once in a “trailer court interior reach,” no longer hesitating. “What the hell’s a trailer court?” he asked. She laughed and answered, “You don’t prefer to know.”

After about quarter-hour Jack, then 39, acknowledged goodbye and returned to his guests.

Half of an hour later, bar proprietor Pat Dorian known as her to the phone. She picked it up. “How ah ya?” came assist the insist with its wide Bostonian accent. It became once Jack. He became once leaving metropolis day after these days for Italy nonetheless would return in two weeks.

On Aug. 24 Jack discovered Jackie, then 27, had given birth to their stillborn daughter Arabella. Four days later he returned to Hammersmith Farm, her family’s estate in Newport, R.I., where she became once getting greater — and fed up.

She’d continuously felt something became once lacking in his nature, and now she knew what it became once: empathy. When Jackie wept on the breakfast desk and acknowledged, “How might per chance well well I essentially were so slow?” her mom, Janet, reached out and took her hand. “You’re no longer slow,” she told her. “You accurate keep your believe in the substandard particular person.”

In early September, Jack returned to L.A. and invited Joan to a dinner occasion on the house of his sister Pat and her husband, actor Peter Lawford.

Joan later remembered feeling anxious and out of her factor, even though she indubitably regarded standard in an outfit from Jax in Beverly Hills, a boutique favored by Marilyn Monroe. She would later write: “He lit up the room. Of us came around accurate to be come him, his energy magnetic. I thought, effectively needless to convey, that’s the politician in him. However I soon realized that, no, that’s accurate who he’s.”

At about slow night, Jack drove Joan up Pacific Hover Toll road to a nondescript 1930s motor court known as the Sunset Motel. They checked in as “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Thompson.” The sex that night became once “wild,” claimed Joan. The next morning over breakfast, he unburdened himself. His fears, his insecurities. It became once as if she became once so removed from his circle, he might per chance well well fragment something else. In step with what Joan later recalled, Jack admitted that he and Jackie were the product of “an arranged marriage” and, as such marriages race, he acknowledged it became once “gorgeous. Not sizable, nonetheless okay.”

Jack acknowledged his family had became in opposition to him for no longer being there for Jackie after Arabella’s stillbirth.

He admitted that “We Kennedys aren’t essentially the most efficient at expressing emotion.” Joan told him, “I’ll bet that’s the sizable excuse of your existence.” Joan asked him if he’d grown to esteem his wife. He hesitated. “I don’t know that I essentially love something else,” became once his respond. That can’t be appropriate, she acknowledged. After a 2nd, he added, “I essentially love politics. I don’t know easy guidelines on how to esteem something else.”

Jack Kennedy had no sooner walked into the foyer of Hammersmith Farm upon his return to Newport when Jackie hit him with a inquire: “Who’s Trailer Park Joan?” As he quiet his thoughts, she clarified issues: “The divorcée! Your sister told me all about her!” He outlined that Joan became once any person he’d met in Los Angeles. Joan is imprecise in her unpublished memoir about how grand Jack told Jackie, easiest that he told her somewhat grand all the pieces.

Within weeks his father, Joe Kennedy, acquired a call from a top Contemporary York attorney who’d been retained to characterize Jackie in a divorce. Joe met Jackie for lunch in Contemporary York to chat about it.

Joe told Jackie that if she agreed to protect in the wedding he might per chance well well give her the liberty to attain no matter she loved. He would provide her $100,000 upon the birth of her and Jack’s first child.

Jackie popular the provide nonetheless needed to uncover a technique to address her husband’s infidelity.

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A protracted time later, Jackie told architect John Carl Warnecke, “He didn’t need to lie to me about this Joan woman. I became once already lying to myself.” Warnecke recalled, “She told me issues changed for her when Jack grew to turn into fervent with Joan nonetheless that it wasn’t a self-discipline she wished to get into. It became once very painful, that grand I knew.”

By 1957 JFK became once being talked about as a presidential contender. In non-public he continued his affair with Joan, flying her to meet him on diverse airways and covering her prices.

“She told me, ‘I never distress about grief after I’m with Jack due to this of I plod for his sister, Pat, your complete time,’ ” acknowledged Joan’s sister, Linda Lydon. Joan later recalled that she and Jack acquired alongside effectively, “with the exception of frequent followers’ tiffs between two high-involving folks.” They usually mentioned his political occupation, with him initiating off sentences with, “Once I’m president . . .”

One night in Might per chance presumably per chance furthermore just (1957) Jack and Joan were sharing a cigarette in bed when he all at once asked her, “Repeat me the reality, Joan. Put you suspect Jackie is screwing diverse guys?” He outlined that Jackie became once “so sizable,” he couldn’t have confidence her no longer having yet one more particular person in her existence. Within the open of the year, he acknowledged, they’d started having sex on occasion, nonetheless “there’s too grand left unspoken between us.” Lately after having sex, she’d asked him, “What you attain with me in bed, is that what she likes?” clearly which implies Joan. He might per chance well well glance the “injure in her eyes,” he acknowledged, “and it killed me.”

After Jackie gave birth to Caroline on Nov. 27, Joan noticed a swap.

She later wrote: “I possess I became once now very grand in esteem, and I became once so mad at myself due to this of I knew greater. I knew greater!” While Jack and Joan would once more fragment their bed in Minneapolis on April 25 and 26, 1958, issues were positively diverse.

On June 25, in conserving alongside with her calendar, Joan known as Jack.

She became once pregnant.

Joan would recall that her files about the toddler became once “love a knife to Jack’s heart.” While it became once a shock, Joan wrote that they shouldn’t were so bowled over: “I didn’t love wearing a diaphragm, and Jack wouldn’t wear a rubber,” she wrote. Jack couldn’t assist nonetheless marvel if Joan had purposely planned the pregnancy given that she’d viewed his devotion to Jackie after Caroline’s birth. He furthermore wondered if he became once essentially the father, and Joan assured him he became once. When he asked her how she felt about the pregnancy, she acknowledged she cherished the 2 formative years she became once elevating on her dangle and knew she’d furthermore esteem any child she and Jack brought into the enviornment. He didn’t know easy guidelines on how to respond.

“I haven’t any words,” he acknowledged.

“Get some,” she told him.

He took both her fingers in his dangle. “I’m so very sorry, Joan,” he told her. “I am, too,” she acknowledged.

Later that summer season they had a hectic phone call.

Sounding edgy and no longer love himself, he told her he’d determined she couldn’t have the toddler. Joan tried to argue, nonetheless she didn’t know how. Jack acknowledged that he’d mail her $400.

He told her, “You’ll know what to attain, Joan. Please,” he acknowledged, his tone determined. “Being a politician is who I am,” he told her. “Politics is all I do know. Within the occasion you are taking that away . . .” His insist trailed off. Before she might per chance well well respond, he disconnected the motorway.

A week later she acquired an envelope with no return address. It became once empty. She told him the cash had been stolen.

He grew to turn into positively unhinged. Joan later wrote: “My God! You had never heard any individual spend expletives so grand in the total history of Washington.” Jack became once very positive; he didn’t prefer Joan to have the toddler. He wired additional cash that identical day, and she took care of issues a day after that. She became once offended and disappointed, nonetheless furthermore realistic.

“From what she later told me, Mother realized the occasion became once over,” acknowledged Zachary Hitchcock in 2024. “She couldn’t be on the sidelines. The presidency, Jackie, the abortion, there became once no intention mom is at chance of be marginalized in that intention. She had intention too grand pleasure.”

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It ended no longer in particular person nonetheless on the phone. When Jack known as Joan to take a look at on her, she told him, “I’m going to prefer to keep a ways between us.” He understood. “I owe you so grand,” he told her. “One ingredient I need to convey to you, Kennedy,” she told him. “You esteem Caroline, and I do know that, nonetheless I’m any individual’s daughter, too. Endure in thoughts that the following time you treat a girl the trend you’ve handled me.”

On Nov. 8, 1960, he grew to turn into the thirty fifth president. His relationship with Joan never came to gentle. However Jackie did set up a scrutinize, a girl she instructed for a job in the place of job of JFK’s non-public secretary Evelyn Lincoln, to protect her posted of suspicious calls.

From all available proof, Jackie never discovered about the abortion, either. A protracted time later, she told a family member, “I became once doing my most efficient with the playing cards I’d been dealt. I cherished Jack. I do know he cherished me. I needed to ignore the remainder of it. My marriage became once love a deep dark gap and I knew if I regarded down, I’d descend in.”

Kennedy had a telling dialog with his buddy Florida senator George Smathers in early 1962. “Put you distress Jackie will uncover about the diverse females?” George asked. Jack grew to turn into at once pissed off. “There are no diverse females. I’ve never told any diverse woman I essentially love her. There is easiest Jackie. In addition to,” he acknowledged, “we might per chance well well all be blown up in an atomic war day after these days. That’s what worries me. Not this bullshit.”

After their son Patrick died on Aug. 9, 1963, two days after being born prematurely, Jackie determined to toddle alongside with her husband to Dallas that November.

A pair of months earlier, on the party of their tenth marriage ceremony anniversary, Jackie and Jack gave every diverse items. She presented him with a brand fresh St. Christopher’s medal due to this of he’d placed his dangle in Patrick’s coffin. In turn, he gave her a gold-and-emerald ring, which represented the combating spirit of the Irish he’d viewed in their son’s fight for survival. He slipped it onto Jackie’s finger next to her marriage ceremony band and asked her to marry him. There’d never been a staunch proposal, aside from a few words in an airport when she returned from her outing to England in 1953. Jack became once a various man.

They planned a non-public ceremony to renew their vows for September 1964 at Hammersmith,
marking their 11th marriage ceremony anniversary. Jackie planned to wear a faded blue or yellow costume.
However it indisputably never came to plod.

Joan (who had married Freemont Hitchcock in 1963) became once devastated by the assassination. She wrote: When the reality struck house, I closed my bedroom curtains and shades, and I cried, screamed, and cursed by myself for hours.

Excerpted from JFK: Public, Personal, Secret, copyright © 2025 by J. Randy Taraborrelli, with permission from St. Martin’s Press.

JFK: Public, Personal, Secret comes out July 15 and is supplied now for preorder, wherever books are supplied.

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