What Happened to Anthony Radziwill? All About the Tragic Loss of JFK Jr.’s Cousin

The Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette will be a devastating final hour. The FX series will inevitably cover the tragic deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette, and Lauren Bessette, circling back to the show’s opening moments.

In the midst of the devastating grief, another beloved member of the extended Kennedy family died. John’s best friend and cousin, Anthony Radziwill (played by Erich Bergen in the show), died just weeks after the July 16, 1999, plane crash that stunned the world. Below, we’ve assembled all the key information you need to know about Anthony Radziwill.

What happened to Anthony Radziwill?

As the show portrayed, Anthony was dealing with cancer throughout the 1990s. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1989 and didn’t share this publicly. In 1994, he was diagnosed with sarcoma. Anthony continued working at ABC News as a television producer as he navigated his diagnosis.

“We could keep this secret for a very long time,” Carole Radziwill, his wife, said on Sarah Brokaw’s Sharing Secrets podcast. “Very few people knew about it. His immediate family, really, and a couple of close friends at work. We lived like that for almost four, really, of the five years he had the illness.”

In the final year of his life, Anthony’s cancer had metastasized, which required intensive chemotherapy and radiation.

When did Anthony Radziwill die?

Anthony died at the age of 40 on August 10, 1999, less than a month after John, Carolyn, and Lauren died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Despite being terminally ill at the time, Anthony attended the burial-at-sea ceremony for his cousin, Carolyn, and Lauren on July 22, as well as the memorial service at St. Thomas More Church in New York City the next day.

Anthony read Psalm 23 during the service. In the weeks before his death, John had actually been preparing Anthony’s eulogy.

“I really don’t remember those three weeks [between John and Carolyn’s deaths and Anthony’s],” Carole told Washington Life Magazine. “I think that the night of the accident, I was mourning and grieving for the three of them. [Grieving for] Anthony as well because I knew it was just a matter of time. But Anthony was still in denial about his illness. And he handled it much better than I did. At this point, he was on dialysis every morning because his kidneys had failed. It really is a bit of a blur to me, those three weeks. I stayed in bed a lot.”

Was Anthony Radziwill married?

Yes, Anthony’s wife was Carole Radziwill (née DiFalco). They met while working at ABC around 1990. The couple was married from 1994 until Anthony’s death in 1999. They did not have children. Carole has never remarried.

Even though Anthony and Carole were extremely close to John and Carolyn, Carole is not featured in Love Story. Executive producer Brad Simpson explained to TV Insider why Carole was not included in the series.

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“People’s lives are full and rich. There’s tons of people in them, and you have to make decisions,” he said. “And a decision we made was to really focus on creating Lauren, her sister, as a character because she was often an afterthought in all of this. And so we thought it was important that, when Carolyn needed a confidant, it be her sister because they were very close.”

How was Anthony Radziwill related to John F. Kennedy Jr.?

Anthony was the son of Lee Radziwill (née Bouvier), Jackie Kennedy’s sister. His father was Prince Stanislaw Radziwill. Anthony and John were first cousins and best friends.

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“When they were kids, John was always the one who joked with Anthony and could make him laugh,” Carole told The Telegraph. “So his way of dealing with the cancer was to continue being funny. He thought it would cheer him up, and it did. But he also told me that he was afraid that if he stopped joking, Anthony would know things were really bad and would just give up and die.”

At Anthony’s funeral, JFK Jr.’s sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, gave a eulogy. “Anthony and John loved each other as best friends, best men, and the brother they each didn’t have,” Caroline said, per the New York Post. Later on in her speech, she noted, “As his physical strength was stripped away through suffering, Anthony became radiant. When I went to visit him, when I always left, curiously, I was the one who came away with strength and understanding.”

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Season Finale, March 6, 9/8c, FX