It makes me feel so old that Howard Stern is out here, reminiscing about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. Stern was six years older than JFK Jr, and they were both living and operating in New York’s media ecosystem in their 1990s heyday. Stern was probably the biggest radio personality in the world, and John was America’s prince. Their paths crossed many times, and Stern apparently knew Carolyn Bessette as well. So, Stern came back from his spring hiatus this week and one of the first things he wanted to talk about on his SiriusXM show was Love Story: JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.

Howard Stern returned from a spring hiatus Monday morning, and revealed to his Sirius/XM audience that he’s one of the millions of Americans watching Ryan Murphy’s new season of Love Story, which chronicles the tragic saga of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. But unlike most viewers, Stern had a relationship with both of them.

“I knew the real Carolyn Bessette,” he said. “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 … I don’t want to go into how I knew her, but I knew her. 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.”

He also spent time with John F. Kennedy Jr. when he agreed to pose for the April 1996 cover of his magazine George. “He actually showed up to the shoot,” 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 colonel garb. I guess I was supposed to be George Washington, but George Washington didn’t wear this sh-t I was wearing. I looked like Paul Revere in drag.”

At the time, Stern was appearing on the cover of very few magazines. “I would do Rolling Stone and that was the only one,” he said. “But when John Kennedy Jr. [asks], who is literally American royalty and the nicest guy in the world … he was a super nice guy. And there was the opportunity that perhaps he’d come on the show.”

Stern’s only opposition to the miniseries is the portrayal of Daryl Hannah. He agreed with her fiery New York Times op-ed [and said]: “I’m on her side,” Stern said during his show. “She’s right. Her complaint is they’re making her look like a douche. From everyone I know who knows Daryl Hannah, they say she’s a great girl … All that aside, my wife and I love the TV show.”

[From Rolling Stone]

I think what Stern said about Carolyn is fine. Welcome, even. It’s another reminder that Love Story is just one dramatization of what these people were actually like. In my opinion, the show went overboard to make Carolyn seem isolated and like she was a prisoner in that Tribeca loft. Carolyn socialized, she went outside, she walked the dog, she had close friends, she knew people like Howard Stern and other media figures in that world. “I know enough to keep my mouth shut about that” – damn straight! Like, I’m sure they partied together back in the day because it was truly a different world and a different New York!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.