Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr. seemed like a perfect match for the glossy pages of George magazine.
She was the rebel royal.
He was America’s Camelot prince.
But when JFK Jr. tried to put Diana on the cover of his political celebrity magazine, the princess reportedly gave him a polite but crushing no.
According to Caroline Hallemann’s book The Kennedys and the Windsors, JFK Jr. was determined to land Diana after launching George in 1995. He believed she was the ultimate mix of fame, power, politics, beauty, and humanitarian star power.
Diana, however, was not so easily won over.
The two met at New York’s famed Carlyle Hotel, where JFK Jr. hoped to seal the deal. Instead, Diana reportedly shut the conversation down almost before it began.
“Well, you know, this is all very nice, John. Thank you,” she allegedly told him, before saying she would pass “this time” and maybe consider it for a future issue.
It was elegant.
It was icy.
And it reportedly left JFK Jr. deeply frustrated.
Insiders said John could not believe Diana kept turning him down. He saw the cover as a historic meeting of two global dynasties: Britain’s royals and America’s Kennedys.
But Diana, who had spent years being hounded by the press, was not about to hand her image over to a new magazine still trying to prove itself.
Even after the snub, JFK Jr. reportedly kept trying.
In February 1997, just six months before Diana died in Paris, she sent him another letter declining an invitation. In it, she referenced the paparazzi nightmare that haunted both of them.
“I hope the media are leaving both you and Carolyn alone,” Diana wrote, referring to JFK Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. “I know how difficult it is, but believe it or not, the worst paparazzi are here in Europe!”
The words now read like a chilling warning.
Diana died later that year after a Paris car crash while being pursued by photographers. Less than two years later, JFK Jr. and Carolyn were killed in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard.
Two glamorous icons.
Two doomed dynasties.
And one magazine cover that never happened.
