Ms Carolyn Bessette (33) entered a US fairy tale when she married Mr Kennedy jnr in 1996. After the secret marriage, she was "elevated to the rank of top Cinderella", said Mr Oleg Cassini, a fashion designer whose clothes were often worn by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
She would be the nation's new "style icon", the "epitome of American chic".
Although the papparazzi managed to catch the couple during mundane activities, they managed to keep their wedding a small, private affair. The Washington Post called it one of the most successful covert operations in history.
Raised amid affluence in Greenwich, Connecticut, she was the daughter of a teacher and administrator who divorced her father when she was a child and remarried a prominent New York orthopedic surgeon.
She has two sisters who are twins and just 18 months older than her: Lisa, and Lauren, who is also missing.
Carolyn Bessette attended a Catholic high school and took a degree in elementary education from Boston University but started work in a Calvin Klein boutique.
The blonde, with a look described as calculated grunge or "effortful effortlessness", was soon noticed by Klein executives and posted to the designer's New York showroom, where she was soon handling celebrity clients. She rose rapidly, becoming Klein's publicist and later his show manager.
In New York, she frequented Manhattan's trendiest night spots. She might have met her future husband at one of them, although the official Kennedy version of their meeting places them on a jogging path at Central Park. They began dating in 1994.