A tall, blond doctor's daughter who grew up in Greenwich, Conneticut, she ended JFK Junior's bachelor days in September 1996, at a wedding held on an island off the coast of Georgia.

"She's got Princess Di and Jackie O down pat," one former colleague said in a magazine article.

A friend of JFK Junior, John Perry Barlow, also compared her to her mother-in-law after the wedding.

"She is very good at making people feel they are special and important, and largely because she means it," he said. "It was the same thing with Jackie."

A tabloid newspaper, The Daily News, dubbed her "Camelot's New Queen" - seeing her as taking over Jackie's role at the family residence in Hyannis Port.

'The Ultimate Beautiful Person'

At the private school, St Mary High School in Greenwich, her classmates voted her "The Ultimate Beautiful Person".

She gained a degree in 1988 in elementary education from Boston University, and while there dated a Canadian-born hockey star.

After college, she worked in Boston in public relations for a nightclub group, and then left to work for Calvin Klein after being spotted walking down a street.

Gossip columnists had differing versions of how she met JFK Junior. One account said they met when she was helping him buy suits at Calvin Klein, another had him contacting her after he saw her jogging in a New York park.

The heir to the Kennedy legacy, who was once voted the sexiest man alive, was considered the most eligible of all bachelors.