Jackie Stories: 1 A Boarding School Friend

Book excerpt: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Tuckerman were friends over seven decades. Nancy almost never talked to people writing books about Jackie. She made an exception for me because I was working with her former colleagues. She and I met for the first time at the Red Lion Inn on a cold day in February. She was wearing a plain brown sweater and hiding behind a newspaper. At first she was stiff with me. But at lunch the young waiter poured her a cold cup of coffee. When he stepped away we both laughed That was how we began a friendlier and franker conversation that lasted ten years. This is a revised and expanded version of my article “Inside Jackie O’s Longest, Most Complicated Friendship,” VANITY FAIR, July 2019. Nancy's insights about Jackie are on every page, but this is also the story of Nancy Tuckerman herself. As I'm telling the story, it's sometimes about me too.