Inside Jackie Kennedy’s years-long affair with JFK’s married brother Bobby

A new book lifts the lid on Jackie Kennedy’s “yearlong affair” with JFK’s married brother Bobby.

DailyMail.com columnist Maureen Callahan’s new biography of the Kennedys – published exclusively by the Mail – reveals how Jackie found solace in an extramarital relationship with Bobby after the president’s assassination in 1963.

They “shared trauma” and a “terrible bond,” Callahan writes “Ask Don’t: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed.”

After JFK’s funeral on November 25, 1963, Jackie “lit the eternal flame at her husband’s grave” at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, before returning to the White House with Bobby.

Ethel Kennedy, Bobby’s wife of 13 years and mother of his seven children, remained behind. A ‘year-long’ sexual relationship soon followed.

“As she said more than once, Bobby was the only one keeping watch [Jackie] to commit suicide,” Callahan wrote. But Bobby also relied on Jackie, “who spent more time with her two children than his.”

If the story of their scandalous affair had been revealed by the press, it would have been “catastrophic,” but “because it was the Kennedys – because of what happened to them [JFK] — the secret was kept despite whispers about it in their social circles, Callahan writes.

And so the couple casually flaunted their relationship, going out to dinner in New York City, openly kissing and cuddling.

It is believed that the affair came to an end when Bobby ran for president in 1968. Jackie became romantically involved with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and married him in October that year.

Bobby ‘hated’ Onassis, and ‘had long suspected that Jackie enjoyed having an affair [him] while [JFK] was still alive,” Callahan wrote.

It is not clear whether Bobby’s wife Ethel was aware of the affair, but after Bobby was also murdered in LA on June 5, 1968, Jackie flew from New York to comfort her.

Jackie helped Ethel make the decision to turn off Bobby’s life support machines.