'Jackie: Public, Private, Secret' shares previously untold details of Jackie's personal life, including her relationship with a former lover, architect Jack Warnecke, and her feelings about Madonna's brief fling with JFK Jr.
There was always more to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis than the life she led in public. According to a new biography — Jackie: Public, Private, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli — exclusively excerpted in this week's issue of PEOPLE, there is still much more to her discover.
In the book, Taraborrelli shares new details of Jackie's private life, including her relationship with former lover, architect Jack Warnecke, and how she really felt about a brief dalliance between her son, John F. Kennedy Jr., and Madonna.
Below, Taraborrelli discusses some of the biggest bombshells from the book. While it was Jackie who would go on to marry John F. Kennedy in 1953, her mom, Janet Bouvier, initially thought that her younger daughter, Lee, might be a better fit for the future president.
John was a young senator from Massachusetts, and Jacqueline Bouvier a "camera girl" and reporter for the Washington Times-Herald, when she — and her sister, Lee — met JFK at a party at the Kennedy's Palm Beach estate.
"JFK and Lee actually got along better than Jackie and JFK," Taraborrelli tells PEOPLE. "And Janet felt that Jackie [who was four years older than Lee] needed to get settled. Lee did not need to get settled yet."
In the end, Jackie's marriage to JFK was a decision not entirely based on a love connection, but as Taraborrelli puts it, on "Which one needed to get settled?" "And when you think about it, it's mind-blowing that in that moment, Janet decided it was going
to be Jackie. And that decision changed everything for those two girls," he says.JFK and Jackie announced their engagement on June 24, 1953, and tied the knot at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island, in September 1953.
While it's been previously reported that on the night of JFK's funeral, Aristotle Onassis spent the night at the White House, Taraborrelli writes that the shipping tycoon also visited Jackie in her private quarters that evening.
At the time, Onassis was dating Jackie's sister, Lee. But according to Taraborrelli, after the assassination, "he called Jackie and said that he was in town for the funeral and was staying at a hotel. And she felt like she had no choice but to invite him to the White House."
Ultimately, Onassis stayed in the spartan living quarters of a White House staff member — a detail which left Lee allegedly "mortified," Says Taraborrelli: "She felt like Ari was going to be very upset. But Onassis was the kind of guy who could really make the best of most any situation."
Onassis didn't attend the funeral. Instead, he stayed at an empty White House, where even the phone operators had left to attend the service.
That evening, after the service, Taraborrelli writes that according to two sources, Onassis was "seen knocking on Jackie's door." But, he left the room within the hour, and, says Taraborrelli, "I can't imagine the grief Jackie was going through. I don't think anything happened between them at that moment."
