Jackie Kennedy Onassis: Her last dear Maurice Tempelsman is dead

Maurice Tempelsman (1929-2025), the last love of the legendary Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994), died at the age of 95. As his son Leon announced, according to the “New York Times”, the diamond dealer died on Saturday, August 23, in the New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.

Maurice Tempelsman was born on August 26, 1929 in Antwerp. His family, Orthodox Jews, fled from Belgium in 1940. The family came to New York City, where Tempelsman visited New York University for two years. But he broke off his studies and instead worked for his father’s diamond trade, Leon Tempelsman & Son.

Maurice Tempelsman developed into an internationally influential diamond dealer. He not only earned millions for the family business, but later also became a middle man between African suppliers and the government. After all, he worked with several African countries, including Ghana and Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo).

He maintained close connections to the US government and supported the Democratic Party with large donations. He later made friends with the staff of several presidents, including John F. Kennedy’s speech writer Ted Sorensen, President Bill Clinton’s Foreign Minister Madeleine K. Albright and his national security advisor Anthony Lake.

Shortly before the election in 1960, Tempelsman arranged a meeting with the designated president Kennedy, his wife and African mining officer. In the following year 1961, Tempelsman and his wife Lilly Burkos took part in a state dinner, in which he and Jackie Kennedy Onassis made a friendship after a short conversation in French, which both spoke fluently. They stayed in touch and wrote letters – even after the president’s murder in 1963 and their wedding with Aristotle Onassis in 1968.

After the death of Onassis in 1975, friendship became a relationship. From the early 1980s, the two performed together in public. They shared a lot of interest, such as art, culture, music and the French language. Tempelsman remained married to Lilly Burkos until she died in 2022.

Maurice Tempelsman and the former First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis were in a relationship until her death in 1994. When lymph gland cancer was diagnosed in her in 1993, he did not get away from her. He moved his office to her apartment and regularly accompanied her to the hospital. He also acted as her financial advisor and helped her, the $ 26 million assets, which Aristotle bequeathed to her, to quadruple. The deceased leaves three children, six grandchildren and seven great -grandchildren.