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

NEED TO KNOW

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

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

• Beneath, be taught what came about — and how Jackie reacted to her husband’s affairs

Joan Lundberg became “one of a fashion,” says her son Zachary Hitchcock. “She became unconventional and neutral — a voluptuous beauty with a nice smile.”

Per a bombshell new biography, JFK: Public, Deepest, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli, the young flight attendant met JFK in 1956 when he became a senator from Massachusetts — and married. It’s a small-known chapter within the lifestyles of the 35th president and might presumably well perhaps need remained that draw had been it no longer for Lundberg’s family, who shared her unpublished memoir and deepest diaries with Taraborrelli.

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The author tells her fable in detail for the first time in his new e book, a be conscious-as a lot as his 2023 biography, Jackie: Public, Deepest Secret. Says Taraborrelli, “With this e book, I wanted no longer to protect JFK but I desired to divulge him.”

“Joan became a immense revelation for me,” the author adds. “She acted as his therapist in some methods. Attributable to she became exterior of his Washington circle, he unfolded to her — and started to reckon with his flaws.” By weaving Lundberg’s fable and parts of her manuscript into his new e book, he says, “You’re left with a portrait of a truly enchanting lady.”

Be taught more under, in an excerpt from JFK: Public, Deepest, Secret shared completely with PEOPLE.

On August 19, 1956, the senator from Massachusetts met Joan Lundberg, 23, standing in entrance 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 pondering Elvis Presley, but what would you fancy to listen to?” she asked. He said he desired to listen to one thing “so I’m in a position to care for you.” Corny, but no longer injurious.

Joan, a single mom of two, became then living with a person named Norm Bishop and working as a flight attendant for Frontier Airways (and as a cocktail waitress on the facet).

When Jack asked where she lived, she instructed him it became in a “trailer court internal watch,” no longer hesitating. “What the hell’s a trailer court?” he asked. She laughed and answered, “You don’t are seeking to know.”

After about quarter-hour Jack, then 39, said goodbye and returned to his friends.

Half of an hour later, bar owner Pat Dorian called her to the phone. She picked it up. “How ah ya?” came support the disclose with its nice Bostonian accent. It became Jack. He became leaving town the next day for Italy but would return in two weeks.

On Aug. 24 Jack came all over out Jackie, then 27, had given start to their stillborn daughter Arabella. Four days later he returned to Hammersmith Farm, her family’s property in Newport, R.I., where she became getting better — and uninterested.

She’d consistently felt one thing became lacking in his nature, and now she knew what it became: empathy. When Jackie wept at the breakfast table and said, “How might presumably well perhaps I in truth had been so tiresome?” her mother, Janet, reached out and took her hand. “You’re no longer tiresome,” she instructed her. “You correct assign your belief within the inferior person.”

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

Joan later remembered feeling timid and out of her factor, even supposing she absolutely regarded trim in an outfit from Jax in Beverly Hills, a boutique liked by Marilyn Monroe. She would later write: “He lit up the room. Folks came around correct to be cease to him, his energy magnetic. I conception, smartly clearly, that’s the baby-kisser in him. Nonetheless I rapidly realized that, no, that’s correct who he is.”

At about nighttime, Jack drove Joan up Pacific Waft Motorway to a nondescript 1930s motor court called the Sundown Motel. They checked in as “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Thompson.” The intercourse that night became “wild,” claimed Joan. The next morning over breakfast, he unburdened himself. His fears, his insecurities. It became as if she became so removed from his circle, he might presumably well perhaps share anything else. Per what Joan later recalled, Jack admitted that he and Jackie had been the product of “an arranged marriage” and, as such marriages depart, he said it became “dazzling. Now not nice, but good ample.”

Jack said his family had became against him for no longer being there for Jackie after Arabella’s stillbirth.

He admitted that “We Kennedys aren’t the handiest at expressing emotion.” Joan instructed him, “I’ll bet that’s the nice excuse of your lifestyles.” Joan asked him if he’d grown to fancy his wife. He hesitated. “I don’t know that I fancy anything else,” became his acknowledge. That can’t be factual, she said. After a 2nd, he added, “I fancy politics. I don’t know straightforward methods to fancy the rest.”

Jack Kennedy had no sooner walked into the foyer of Hammersmith Farm upon his return to Newport when Jackie hit him with a matter: “Who’s Trailer Park Joan?” As he still his suggestions, she clarified issues: “The divorcée! Your sister instructed me all about her!” He explained that Joan became somebody he’d met in Los Angeles. Joan is vague in her unpublished memoir about how powerful Jack instructed Jackie, handiest that he instructed her relatively powerful every little thing.

Inside of weeks his father, Joe Kennedy, purchased a name from a high New York attorney who’d been retained to state Jackie in a divorce. Joe met Jackie for lunch in New York to discuss about it.

Joe instructed Jackie that if she agreed to cease within the marriage he might presumably well perhaps give her the freedom to attain whatever she beloved. He would offer her $100,000 upon the start of her and Jack’s first small one.

Jackie authorized the provide but needed to get a system to deal along with her husband’s infidelity.

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A protracted time later, Jackie instructed architect John Carl Warnecke, “He didn’t must lie to me about this Joan lady. I became already lying to myself.” Warnecke recalled, “She instructed me issues changed for her when Jack grew to alter into exciting with Joan but that it wasn’t a field she desired to accumulate into. It became very painful, that powerful I knew.”

By 1957 JFK became being talked about as a presidential contender. In deepest he continued his affair with Joan, flying her to meet him on assorted airlines and overlaying her costs.

“She instructed me, ‘I never alarm about wretchedness after I’m with Jack as a result of I depart for his sister, Pat, the total time,’ ” said Joan’s sister, Linda Lydon. Joan later recalled that she and Jack purchased along smartly, “excluding for customary lovers’ tiffs between two excessive-spicy americans.” And they discussed his political profession, with him setting out sentences with, “When I’m president . . .”

One night in Would possibly perhaps just (1957) Jack and Joan had been sharing a cigarette in bed when he unexpectedly asked her, “Notify me the real fact, Joan. Construct you think Jackie is screwing other guys?” He explained that Jackie became “so nice,” he couldn’t agree with her no longer having one more person in her lifestyles. At the starting of the 365 days, he said, they’d started having intercourse every on occasion, but “there’s too powerful left unstated between us.” Honest these days after having intercourse, she’d asked him, “What you attain with me in bed, is that what she likes?” clearly which skill that Joan. He might presumably well perhaps discover about the “wound in her eyes,” he said, “and it killed me.”

After Jackie gave start to Caroline on Nov. 27, Joan noticed a trade.

She later wrote: “I suspect I became now very powerful in fancy, and I became so mad at myself as a result of I knew better. I knew better!” While Jack and Joan would all over again share their bed in Minneapolis on April 25 and 26, 1958, issues had been with out a doubt assorted.

On June 25, per her calendar, Joan called Jack.

She became pregnant.

Joan would recall that her records about the toddler became “fancy a knife to Jack’s heart.” While it became a shock, Joan wrote that they shouldn’t had been so shocked: “I didn’t fancy carrying a diaphragm, and Jack wouldn’t assign on a rubber,” she wrote. Jack couldn’t abet but wonder if Joan had purposely deliberate the pregnancy on condition that she’d seen his devotion to Jackie after Caroline’s start. He furthermore questioned if he became in truth the father, and Joan assured him he became. When he asked her how she felt about the pregnancy, she said she cherished the 2 young americans she became elevating on her contain and knew she’d furthermore fancy any small one she and Jack brought into the enviornment. He didn’t know straightforward methods to acknowledge.

“I in truth have not any words,” he said.

“Receive some,” she instructed him.

He took both her fingers in his contain. “I’m so very sorry, Joan,” he instructed her. “I am, too,” she said.

Later that summer season they’d a nerve-racking phone name.

Sounding edgy and no longer fancy himself, he instructed her he’d decided she couldn’t have the toddler. Joan tried to argue, but she didn’t know the draw. Jack said that he’d mail her $400.

He instructed her, “You’ll know what to attain, Joan. Please,” he said, his tone desperate. “Being a baby-kisser is who I am,” he instructed her. “Politics is all I know. When you rob that away . . .” His disclose trailed off. Sooner than she might presumably well perhaps acknowledge, he disconnected the street.

Per week later she purchased an envelope with no return take care of. It became empty. She instructed him the money had been stolen.

He grew to alter into positively unhinged. Joan later wrote: “My God! You had never heard anybody expend expletives so powerful within the total history of Washington.” Jack became very obvious; he didn’t need Joan to have the toddler. He wired extra money that identical day, and he or she took care of issues a day after that. She became offended and disappointed, but furthermore realistic.

“From what she later instructed me, Mother realized the occasion became over,” said Zachary Hitchcock in 2024. “She couldn’t be on the sidelines. The presidency, Jackie, the abortion, there became no draw mother can also very smartly be marginalized in that draw. She had draw too powerful pride.”

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It ended no longer in person but on the phone. When Jack called Joan to verify on her, she instructed him, “I’m going to are seeking to place a ways between us.” He understood. “I owe you so powerful,” he instructed her. “One factor I are seeking to claim to you, Kennedy,” she instructed him. “You fancy Caroline, and I know that, but I’m somebody’s daughter, too. Endure in mind that the next time you take care of a girl the draw you’ve treated me.”

On Nov. 8, 1960, he grew to alter into the 35th president. His relationship with Joan never came to mild. Nonetheless Jackie did set up a behold, a girl she urged for a job within the workplace of JFK’s deepest secretary Evelyn Lincoln, to protect her posted of suspicious calls.

From all out there proof, Jackie never came all over out about the abortion, both. A protracted time later, she instructed a family member, “I became doing my handiest with the cards I’d been dealt. I cherished Jack. I know he cherished me. I needed to push aside the remainder of it. My marriage became fancy a deep black gap and I knew if I regarded down, I’d plunge in.”

Kennedy had a telling dialog with his friend Florida senator George Smathers in early 1962. “Construct you are concerned Jackie will discover about the different girls folks?” George asked. Jack grew to alter into at the moment frustrated. “There don’t appear to be some other girls folks. I’ve never instructed some other lady I fancy her. There is handiest Jackie. Moreover,” he said, “shall all of us be blown up in an atomic battle the next day. That’s what worries me. Now not this bullshit.”

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

A few months earlier, at the occasion of their tenth wedding anniversary, Jackie and Jack gave one one more gifts. She offered him with a brand new St. Christopher’s medal as a result of he’d positioned his contain in Patrick’s coffin. In flip, he gave her a gold-and-emerald ring, which represented the combating spirit of the Irish he’d seen of their son’s fight for survival. He slipped it onto Jackie’s finger next to her wedding band and asked her to marry him. There’d never been a staunch proposal, excluding for about a words in an airport when she returned from her outing to England in 1953. Jack became a distinct man.

They deliberate a deepest ceremony to renew their vows for September 1964 at Hammersmith,
marking their 11th wedding anniversary. Jackie deliberate to place on a delicate blue or yellow costume.
Nonetheless it never came to depart.

Joan (who had married Freemont Hitchcock in 1963) became devastated by the assassination. She wrote: When the real fact struck home, I closed my bedroom curtains and shades, and I cried, screamed, and cursed on my own for hours.

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

JFK: Public, Deepest, Secret comes out July 15 and is out there now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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