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 Senator John F. Kennedy Announces His Coming Engagement to Jacqueline Bouvier Before Public Announcement

Writes Friend He Is No Longer "The Senate's Gay Young Bachelor" as told in Saturday Evening Post Article

Comes with Saturday Evening Post Issue That Is Subject of Letter And Cause For Postponement of Engagement Announcement

Addressee's Retained Copy

 

 

 Here's the story of how the June 13, 1953 Saturday Evening Post article referred to in our letter influenced the announcement of the engagement of John Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier:

Some time afterward, they began seeing each other, and the courtship gathered momentum. In 1953, while she was in London on assignment, Mr. Kennedy called her and proposed. Their engagement was not immediately made public by the Kennedys who feared that it might have headed off a flattering article due to appear in the Saturday Evening Post entitled, "Jack Kennedy -- Senate's Gay Young Bachelor." The article appeared in the June 13 issue and the engagement was announced on June 25. They were married Sept. 12, 1953, at Hammersmith Farm in Newport.  (Source: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jbk.htm)

Our letter thanks "Mac" for his "kind remarks about the article written by Paul Healy which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post" and then adds a handwritten postscript:

"I'm getting engaged this week, so the voice of the 'Senate's gay young bachelor' will be heard no more."

Thus on June 19 Senator Kennedy let his friend Walter "Mac" MacRae know that he was getting married before he announced the engagement publicly! The letter was apparently copied and folded and stashed away until MacRae died and it was put up for auction with some other Kennedy memorabilia from MacRae's collection (including an original signed White House photograph). I have no idea where the original letter went but this aged and slightly yellowed copy is a wonderful memorabilia of the romance of Camelot.

News of the engagement was splashed on the cover of LIFE magazine on July 20, 1953 with Kennedy and his new fiancée shown yachting as shown below.

  

This full issue of LIFE and the June 13 issue of the Saturday Evening Post will both be included with the letter, making a wonderful archive remembering the young John Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier who were destined to impress and excite the world during Presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Price: SOLD