Cheryl Hines’ 10-year marriage reaches breaking point as ‘lifelong philanderer’ RFK Jr’s sexting scandal humiliates her yet again

She has made her career playing the role of the patient wife who is regularly humiliated by her husband, whose bizarre statements destroy professional relationships and end friendships.

But since her marriage to 70-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr., life has increasingly become an art form for 58-year-old Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines. Her reputation, career and friendships have taken a serious hit in recent years because of her husband’s political views.

First there was his rabid anti-vaccination campaign during the heat of the Covid pandemic, where he was notorious for claiming that the situation for anti-vaxxers was worse than Anne Frank.

Last month, Kennedy endorsed Trump, a move he made after dropping out of the presidential race that he said could be “catastrophic” for his marriage.

Hines has been through it all. It’s raining

Now it’s the revelation that Kennedy is having an affair with New York Magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi that has people wondering if this is the moment for Hines to dump her bear-dumping husband.

After all, she has been through so much. She has seen work projects “paused” and she has been criticized by liberals for not speaking out against her husband’s presidential choice, even though she has made it very clear that she disagrees with his position.

Earlier this month, the hate grew so loud that Bill Maher stepped in to defend Hines from the “obnoxious posers on… the far left” who were “screaming at her by the thousands.” According to Maher, “Going after the woman… Not even the Mafia does that.”

It’s been 10 years since Hines and Kennedy married in a subdued but starry celebration in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

She wore a Jackie Kennedy-inspired dress, guests enjoyed steamed lobster and a clam bake, and Natasha Bedingfield serenaded the bride and groom with her hit single “Unwritten.” Unraveled would be more appropriate today.

Olivia Nuzzi, 31, interviewed Kennedy – who New Yorker described as a “lifelong womanizer” in a profile last month — in November 2023. She did so at the Brentwood, California, home he shares with Hines and their three dogs.

Five months earlier, Hines gave a glowing interview to the New York Times from the same home, in which she said how much she wanted her husband to feel “loved and supported” by her.

Nuzzi and Kennedy went for a walk and exchanged numbers. In the weeks that followed, they exchanged many more numbers. According to Nuzzi, who has been suspended by New York magazine, the relationship never progressed beyond sexting.

Kennedy insisted he had met Nuzzi — whose engagement to Politico chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza was called off in recent weeks — only once.

He also called the article that spawned the interview “a damning piece” and said the relationship was “emotional and digital in nature, not physical.”

Either way, it’s a kick in the face for Hines. Larry David once described her as “the only person in Hollywood who doesn’t have a single enemy,” but she has remained faithful to her husband, at great personal cost.

It was David who introduced Kennedy to his Curb Your Enthusiasm colleague in 2006 during a ski weekend in Banff, Canada, for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit Kennedy co-founded.

Hines had no plans to go skiing, but told the New York Times: “The next thing you know, we’re on skis and on a ski lift. I looked at Larry and thought, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and gave a sign like, ‘That’s Bobby.'”

Both Hines and Kennedy were married to other people when they met. Hines was married to Paul Young, founder of the management company Principato-Young, with whom she has a daughter, Catherine, 20.

Kennedy was married to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Kennedy filed for divorce from Mary in 2010, but she hanged herself in 2012 before the proceedings were completed.

By then, Hines and Kennedy had reconnected. They went public with their relationship in October 2011 and married three years later.

Hines later admitted that David never intended to play matchmaker and even gave her a hard time about the relationship, saying, “Why would you do that? Are you crazy?”

It’s a question she may be asking herself today. She herself admitted that when she met Kennedy, she “didn’t know all that much about politics” and had only a schoolgirl’s knowledge of her future husband’s political dynasty.

Yet Hines, a wife who does not share her husband’s political views, has remained publicly loyal to the extreme. As Maher recently noted, she has faced waves of criticism for not “throwing her husband under the bus” when he threw his name and influence behind Trump.

Kennedy also stood up for his wife when she faced intense public outrage.

“She’s a lifelong Democrat,” he told TMZ. “And the idea that I would support Donald Trump… was, like I said, something she never imagined, something she never wanted in her life.

“I think it causes her a lot of discomfort.”

Hines must have been very familiar with this discomfort during her 10-year marriage to Kennedy.

Just two years ago, after Kennedy’s anti-vaccine comments about Anne Frank, things got so bad that he suggested announcing a sham divorce in the form of a public announcement, thereby distancing his wife from his statements and decisions.

Hines turned him down. But that was then. Today, with his affair with Nuzzi, he may be experiencing that distance for real.