"The Fall of Cuomolot" Revisted
Vanity Fair's Old Article "The untold backstory of the Andrew Cuomo and Kerry Kennedy union—and the coupling and decoupling of two great American political families" is worth a re-read
Considering the interest in a briefly brushed-upon Cuomo / Kennedy connection, I figured this old article was worth a revisit. For context, anyway. A fascinating look at two conflicting family dynasties once connected by a marriage that didn’t last.
This article first appeared in Vanity Fair The Fall of Cuomolot: Inside the Ill-Fated Kennedy-Cuomo Marriage as an excerpt from The Contender: Andrew Cuomo, a Biography published March 31, 2015.
Proposing to Kerry Kennedy was a big step for Andrew Cuomo, and by the time he did it, on Valentine’s Day, 1990, he had given it a lot of serious thought. He’d asked others to give it serious thought, too. “I’m planning to ask Kerry to marry me,” he said to the journalists and P.R. flacks whom he used as a sounding board. “How do you think it will play?” Some of the journalists were acquaintances at best. Appreciative as they were of candor, the pre-proposal talk struck them as odd. Why would he share this intimate plan with them before he broached it to Kerry? And why worry about how the media would perceive it?
Kerry, the seventh of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children, was two years younger than Andrew (she was 30, he was 32), a vigorous athlete like most of her siblings, and a graduate of Brown and Boston College Law School. She was an ardent human-rights activist who had taken the lead in setting up the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights—a perfect counterpart to Andrew’s own growing nonprofit for the homeless, the one he called HELP. More sensitive than some of her siblings, Kerry had just suffered a personal loss that left her especially vulnerable. Her longtime boyfriend, whom she’d met when both were undergraduates at Brown, had dropped dead of a heart attack during a snowball fight on the Washington Mall. The two had intended to marry; Kerry was bereft, and open to a big, strong, protective guy who not only knew the values her father had lived by, but seemed to embrace them.
Smitten as Kerry was by Andrew—he was, after all, not just an activist but a hunk—she did roll her eyes a bit when she first saw his apartment: the always fastidious Andrew had his living-room furniture covered in clear plastic. The first night she cooked dinner for him there, she opened the oven to find the original Styrofoam packing material still in it. Andrew had avoided using it for fear of dirtying it up. But there were worse traits than being a clean freak, Kerry decided.
As the romance deepened and a Kennedy-Cuomo pairing became more than idle speculation, the two political families viewed each other with wariness and curiosity, though perhaps not in equal measures.
To the Cuomos, the Kennedys were American royalty, for all the reasons they were to everyone else. Marrying into that charismatic clan would make the Cuomos royal, too, insofar as any American political dynasty could be seen as such. It would also draw them into a private world of wealth and privilege, a planet away from Queens, New York, home to three generations of Cuomos. The Cuomos played stickball on the streets of Holliswood; the Kennedys played touch football on their oceanfront lawn at Hyannis Port. Andrew had driven a AAA truck for extra money and taken out student loans. Bobby, the late senator’s second-oldest son, spent his spare time training falcons; the Kennedys could saunter into Harvard as they pleased, and go on to the Kennedy School of Government. Andrew was awed by that. Over the next 15 years he would invoke the Kennedy name so often and with such delight that his listeners would be startled by it, and not forget.
“Look, he was very handsome, very charming, very funny,” Kerry would later explain. “It was a traditional crush.” But the Kennedys were somewhat less impressed by their prospective in-laws. The Cuomo swagger didn’t square with the old-guard reserve imparted so sternly by Joseph Kennedy to his children, and from them to theirs. The Kennedys were also more relaxed than the Cuomos, not just quick to throw a ball around but happy to join in rambling dinner debates and to brandish high ideals. “Andrew refused to do anything fun, anything without a clear benefit to his career,” a family acquaintance said years later. After three generations, the Kennedys were at ease with who they were and not shy about their shortcomings; the Cuomos, as one journalist noted, were “tight-knit and tightly wound, fiercely protective of any chink that might be perceived as a sign of weakness or vulnerability.” One insider, asked what the family thought of Andrew as a match for Kerry, sighed and said, “You just try to be supportive.”
Clannish as they were, the Cuomos were appalled to find the family dragged, by early 1989, into court for a messy estate battle after the death of Andrew’s maternal grandfather. It was a story that aired deep sibling rivalries, jealousy, resentment, and greed—all over a sum of money the Kennedys could only have viewed as piddling. The suit was settled. But the Kennedys had to wonder: Were these Cuomos, with their brooding egos and their battling relatives, really the right fit for America’s First Family?
The engagement was announced in mid-February 1990 to breathless press about the joining of two prominent political families. “This is a story that has everything,” The New York Timesgushed. “Love. Politics. History.” Kerry was giddy, too. “I think this is the happiest day of my life,” she said. As for Andrew, he described himself as “a very lucky man,” and waved off questions about a prenuptial agreement as “tacky.”
The first time he visited Hickory Hill, the Kennedy estate in McLean, Virginia, Andrew found himself at a boisterous gathering, with most of the Kennedy brothers at one end of the table, when the subject of Oceanmark—a Florida S&L in which Andrew had taken a business interest, with disastrous results—came up. “So what did you do with that bank in Florida?” Bobby Jr. asked.
“Andrew then goes into this 10-minute speech of nothingness, not making any sense,” recalled Douglas Kennedy, Kerry’s brother. “The whole table stops; we’re listening to this very defensive explanation. Finally he finishes, and there’s a lull, and one of the brothers says, ‘So what did you do with that bank in Florida?’ And everyone laughs but Andrew.”
From the moment Kerry accepted his proposal, Andrew took on the planning of the wedding like a political campaign. Three-inch binders covering its every aspect were created by trusted aides. Later, Kerry would admit to friends that his manner shook her a bit, but at the time she gushed at how manly and confident he was, taking charge. Wasn’t that what every bride wanted? To her family, a red flag went up when Andrew decreed that there would be no toasts, either at the wedding reception or at dinner the night before. No toasts? The Kennedys were astonished. Toasts were the best part of a wedding, the more irreverent the better. But that, it seemed, was exactly why Andrew forbade them. He didn’t want the risk of any off-color stories. This is no fun, the Kennedys muttered among themselves.
The wedding, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 1990, was as close to a royal affair as American nuptials could get. Kerry’s choice of church was poignant: St. Matthew’s was the setting, 27 years earlier, for President John F. Kennedy’s funeral mass. The bride carried a bouquet of gardenias and white roses and wore a white satin gown. Her mother stood at her side in a pink chiffon suit. By Kennedy tradition, the 300 guests applauded when Kerry entered the church trailing 15 bridesmaids and 11 flower girls and boys. She walked up the aisle unescorted, a poignant moment in itself. Already, the press had a catchword for the new political chapter the wedding would bring: Cuomolot.
Eventually, the newlyweds found a six-bedroom house in the upscale Queens enclave of Douglas Manor—a major real-estate purchase made with a little assist from the bride’s side of the family. When they’d finished redecorating, they covered a second-floor wall with letters that President Kennedy and Kerry’s father, Bobby Kennedy, had written her over the years.
Andrew had his Kennedy bride—and as much as their union might seem a modern marriage of convenience, conjoining two political families like European kingdoms, friends discerned a deeper bond. Kerry understood what it meant to lead a public life and hide one’s vulnerabilities when the going got rough. In all the ways he needed, she could be Andrew’s helpmate. “Kerry was the right person at the right time for him,” a friend suggested. “It wasn’t just that she offered him entrée. It was that she understood. And they were kindred spirits who fell in love because they share this bond.”
“The Cuomo swagger didn’t square with the old-guard reserve imparted so sternly by Joseph Kennedy to his children, and from them to theirs. The Kennedys were also more relaxed than the Cuomos, not just quick to throw a ball around but happy to join in rambling dinner debates and to brandish high ideals.”
With the start of the Clinton presidency, Andrew wangled a top cabinet post as an assistant secretary at Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the perfect place to expand on his work for the homeless. For the first year or so, until they got their own house, he and Kerry lived at Hickory Hill in McLean, where Kerry had grown up amid constant sports, roughhousing, and bombing down pool slides with her 10 siblings.
So welcoming was the Kennedy clan that the exes of either sex stayed on as friends. Andrew put a stop to that. For Kerry, that meant no more former boyfriends, not even those whom the Kennedys regarded as family. That was the word, and Andrew was dead serious about it. The new rule reinforced the doubts the family had had about Andrew from the start: he wasn’t fun; he didn’t getfun. He was, to put it mildly, a spoilsport. Unlike the Kennedys, too, he didn’t mask his ambition with charm, and no one, not even his in-laws, would stand in his way. And, as Andrew’s star at HUD rose, he seemed increasingly to regard those in-laws with disdain.
He hated the gatherings in Hyannis; he always felt like the odd man out. The joshing around, the freewheeling talks—Andrew was just too tightly wound to join in. One night, as was typical, the family began singing songs, each member singing a favorite. “The Kennedys are terrible singers, but it’s one of the great joys,” explained Douglas Kennedy. “One time Joe [Jr.] is up there, and he sings ‘Danny Boy,’ and everyone is happy about it. Except Andrew. He’s on the couch with his arms folded, looking disgusted by the whole thing. Everyone is calling for someone else to sing a song. ‘Andrew, you sing,’ someone says. But he says, ‘No, I’m not Irish.’ So someone else says, ‘Sing something Italian.’ Andrew still won’t, so I sing ‘Volare.’”
Andrew stopped going to Hyannis at one point, a family member recalled. But he made sure to be with the clan at any gathering covered by the media. Early on, the family noticed that at every visit to Arlington Cemetery to honor their father or uncle, Andrew situated himself just so. “He would always find the exact perfect place to stand so he could be in the newspaper the next day,” recalled a relative. “So if that meant grabbing [Ethel’s] hand and walking to the grave, or standing next to John or Caroline, he would get himself in the frame. That was his whole thrust.”
At the end of December 1997, the Kennedys would endure another death in the family. Michael Kennedy, not yet 40, sixth of Robert and Ethel’s 11 children, died in a skiing accident in Aspen. Two days later, when the family gathered to mourn at Hyannis Port, Andrew was there. Members of the press were up the street, but the family remained cloistered in grief. Other than by name, Michael had not been a public figure. “It was not something we were sharing with the world,” one close observer explained.
“Andrew stopped going to Hyannis at one point, a family member recalled. But he made sure to be with the clan at any gathering covered by the media. Early on, the family noticed that at every visit to Arlington Cemetery to honor their father or uncle, Andrew situated himself just so. “He would always find the exact perfect place to stand so he could be in the newspaper the next day,” recalled a relative.”
A television was on, and suddenly there on the screen were Andrew and his brother, Chris, speaking to the press about Michael and the impact his death had had on his family. They had just walked up the street on their own to give the interview.
Most of the family was too stunned to say anything to Andrew when he returned, but Rory managed to ask, “Andrew, why did you do that?” Two days before, she had been on a ski slope in Aspen, trying to save her brother’s life with C.P.R. Someone had had to do it, Andrew replied. In fact, the family was lucky that he was there to handle the moment. Speechless, Rory fled to her room upstairs
“We had tried to be gracious,” one family member said. “In my family, no matter how much someone is an enemy, you can be gracious with them.” That was how Ted Kennedy conducted himself as a senator; it was how the next generation tried to act, too. With Andrew, graciousness didn’t work. “Andrew always interpreted graciousness as weakness,” Douglas Kennedy explained. “No matter what anyone did to be nice to him, it was going to be interpreted as political.”
For Douglas and—so he says—his siblings, that news conference after Michael’s death was the turning point. “That’s where I started to think, This is just a bully.”
Tensions in the marriage deepened through the 1990s, despite Kerry’s insistence that they participate in marriage therapy by year two. Andrew seemed utterly consumed by his work; Kerry felt weighted down by the full load of parenting the couple’s three young daughters. Yet even as they contemplated divorce in 2001, Kerry began working for Andrew in his first, ill-fated campaign—for governor of New York. For Andrew, the pride of being a member of the Kennedy clan never abated. At one campaign appearance, his youngest daughter, Michaela, wandered out in front of him. “Upstaged by a Kennedy,” Andrew quipped to the crowd. His daughters, he proudly noted, even had Kennedy mannerisms and gestures.
The campaign made Kerry appreciate Andrew’s capacity for hard work, and she had no doubt that he would make a good governor. Her problem with her husband was strictly personal. The stresses of marriage and parenthood might have been alleviated, Kerry felt, if she and Andrew spent more time with their families (particularly her own): more child-care options, more camaraderie, more love and support. But Andrew did not agree.
Andrew’s first run for governor could hardly have ended more calamitously. Pitted in the Democrat primary against Carl McCall, the state comptroller and a graceful, longtime leader of the state’s black political caucus, he showed a harsh, caustic side that alienated almost everyone. As his poll numbers plummeted in late August, he made the decision to quit the race rather than suffer a whopping defeat, earning all the more scorn from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Andrew’s most damning review awaited him at home. On September 11, 2002, the day after the primary, Kerry demanded a divorce—the end of Cuomolot. She had lived up to her side of the deal, she told friends, being the loyal candidate’s wife throughout the campaign, not letting a hint slip of the true state of their marriage. But now, enough was enough.
I'm stuck at the part where Andrew Cuomo is referred to as a hunk. GAG!
Now I want to hear why Chris got all bent out of shape😆🤣😆🤣😆