00:00Even before her rollercoaster love story with John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette had
00:04a type, beautiful men with power and influence. There was Alessandro Benetton, an heir to
00:11the clothing fortune, Will Regan, the nightlife impresario behind Manhattan hotspots like Rex
00:16and later Lotus, and one of her great romances, Calvin Klein model Michael Bergen. Kennedy
00:22was people's sexiest man alive in 1988, but Bergen, a friend of Bessette's said, gave
00:28him a run for his money. So much so that sources say that John was jealous. Do I think she
00:33used Michael to get John jealous? I think Michael got John jealous. Carolyn was too smart not
00:39to not be aware of that. She loved Michael. Sources also believe that Bessette's feelings
00:43for Bergen, who starred on Baywatch, never completely went away, even after she married
00:48Kennedy. They still had a lot of chemistry, the source added, adding that Bessette was
00:52repeatedly drawn back to Bergen. In fact, Bergen claimed in his 2004 book, The Other
00:58Man, A Love Story, that he and Bessette continued their relationship after she was with Kennedy.
01:03He also told Good Morning America that the affair was wrong on my part, and her part.
01:08While still living in Boston, where she went to college, Bessette may have manifested becoming
01:12Mrs. JFK Jr. before she even met Kennedy, according to his friend Steve Gillen, in the biography
01:19America's Reluctant Prince. According to the book, she told a friend at Boston University
01:23in 1988, quote, I'm going to move to New York, and I'm going to get him. Before that
01:28happened, though, Bessette bided her time with notable men. She dated NHL star John Cullen,
01:34who later played for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning, while they both attended
01:38BU. Then there was the fling with Benetton, the Italian clothing heir, while she was working
01:44as a salesperson at a Calvin Klein Boston boutique around 1989. By the time Bessette moved to New
01:50York in the early 90s and got her break as a fashion publicist at Calvin Klein, she was
01:54gliding past the velvet ropes at New York nightclubs, like Rex, where she sparked a relationship
01:59with owner Regan. But it was her on-and-off-again romance with Bergen, famous for his washboard
02:05abs and Klein's ubiquitous underwear ads, that was the biggest threat to her relationship with
02:09John. The friend said,
02:11She was constantly drawn back to Michael Bergen. She was very in love with him. They had a real
02:16connection. I don't know that they had a hard ending. The source told Page Six that Bessette's
02:21relationship with the model got under JFK Jr.'s skin. The source noted, however, there are many
02:26people who felt she used Michael to get to John. According to author Maureen Callahan, Bessette told
02:32Bergen in October 1993 that she was pregnant, that the baby was his, and despite his willingness to
02:38raise the child with her, that she was going to have an abortion. The model begged her to spend the
02:43weekend with him in Connecticut, Callahan writes, but Bessette refused. Bergen apparently found out
02:48that Bessette was reunited with Kennedy when he saw the two, a month after the abortion bombshell,
02:53on the front page of The Post, watching the New York City Marathon together. Nonetheless, Callahan writes,
02:59Bergen still accompanied Bessette to the abortion. But she never quite let Bergen go. In early 1996,
03:05according to Callahan, Bessette allegedly called to tell Bergen she had been pregnant again,
03:10presumably by Kennedy, but lost the baby. In the end, Bessette was torn between the free and easy
03:15life she lived with Bergen and the appeal of Kennedy, even though she didn't really want all the
03:20trappings of being a Kennedy, according to the friend, who added, being a celebrity is not something
03:25she wanted to be. Still, she and Kennedy were married that September. The source said,
03:29I believe Michael was special enough that many people viewed him as a rival for John.
03:34But at the end of the day, he wasn't John. She obviously wanted to marry John.
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