The new series Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has put the spotlight on the many people who were part of the late couple’s lives.
Someone who figures largely in the series is Calvin Klein, the US fashion designer behind his eponymous label – where Bessette worked before she met Kennedy.
While Klein, now 83, has spent the past decade in a relationship with much younger former model Kevin Baker, during the events of Love Story he was still married to his second wife, Kelly Rector.
Let’s look back at Klein’s life and loves, including two marriages.
Early life
Klein was born in the Bronx area of New York on November 19, 1942.
His father, an immigrant, owned a produce store where he learned about business and spotting quality, while his grandmother had her own clothes alteration business, where his love of fashion was born. His mother also loved fashion, especially beiges and fur.
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Klein’s parents encouraged his pursuit of the arts after he showed talent sketching and painting.
He attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan before deciding a career in a lonely art studio was not for him and instead pursued fashion.
He attended New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, initially leaving once after six months before returning to complete his degree.
Afterwards, he completed an apprenticeship at a cloak-and-suit manufacturer then spent five years working as a designer in various New York stores.
First marriage – Jayne Centre
In 1964, he married Jayne Centre when she was 20 and he was 21.
They had both grown up in the Bronx and attended the same high school. According to Vanity Fair, they began dating then, while other reports say they didn’t become a couple until college.
She went on to become a textile designer.
In 1967, they welcomed their daughter Marci, who is an Emmy-winning television producer best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and sitcom 30 Rock.
During a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair, Marci recalled her early upbringing.
“They were young parents from the Bronx,” she said.
“They were still living in Queens when I was born, so I remember my dad before he was famous.
“There were canvases around and he was [still] painting. ‘Hippies’ is not the right word for them, but they were artsy.
“The apartment didn’t look like other people’s. It had white wood floors and all white walls. They weren’t like anybody else’s [parents].”
It was during their marriage that Klein launched Calvin Klein Limited in 1968 with the help of his childhood friend, Barry K. Schwartz.
After Schwartz lent him the $14,000 he needed to get started, Klein insisted they become business partners.
He told Schwartz he wanted to “design medium priced clothes with a clean look”, and started designing coats.
His first Calvin Klein collection followed in 1968. The line of “youthful, understated coats and dresses” attracted a buyer from New York’s Bonwit Teller store.
By the following September, he made it into Vogue.
His collection grew and by 1973, he won the Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award for his 74-piece womenswear collection.
But as his star rose, his marriage fell apart.
He was working 18-hour days and often slept in his showroom.
He and Centre divorced in 1974. When asked once why they split, Klein said, “We were kids. We grew in different directions”.
Klein spent the next years growing the brand. By 1977, it was turning over $42 million – equivalent to $224 million today – and had diversified into making scarves, shoes, belts, fur, sunglasses and even bed linen.
He soon added cosmetics and menswear to the range, and of course a line of tight-fitting denim jeans, selling 200,000 in the first week.
He made history by adding a simple logo to many of his designs.
Then in 1982, came his pioneering men’s underwear line. Originally all-white and sold in a pack of three, the marketing aim was pure genius – for every woman to buy them for the man in her life, be it boyfriend, husband or son.
Second marriage – Kelly Rector
In 1981, Rector started working for Klein as a design assistant.
According to Vanity Fair, she had studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and was turned down for a job after her first job interview at Calvin Klein.
But after she met Klein at the famed Studio 54 nightclub one night, she got a call from him the next morning telling her to start work the next day.
She was just 21 and told Vanity Fair in 2008, her life changed in an instant.
“My whole life changed with Calvin. He would walk into the room, and it was just like the lights went on,” she said.
“The movie started every single day. I was so much more special when he came into the room.
“When you fall in love with someone, all the rumours that you hear fall away.”
The two married while on a business trip in Rome in 1986, and continued to work and live together for the next decade.
It was reportedly Rector who came up with the range of men’s-style underwear for women.
She also figures heavily in the new series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.
Bessette was working for Calvin Klein when she first met John F. Kennedy Jr, in 1992, although reports vary.
Rector told the biographer behind the 2024 book, Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy that “John invited her to join his group at a gala dinner”.
“Sitting next to him was another woman that Carolyn either mistook as his date, or actually was his date.”
The series also depicted the company’s iconic advertising campaigns starring the likes of Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss – which followed on from Brooke Shields’ 1980 “nothing between me and my Calvins” campaign – as well as the end of their marriage.
The two separated in 1996 but did not divorce until a decade later, and have maintained a good relationship, even posing together for photos during New York Fashion Week in February 2025.
In 2002, Klein sold his brand to Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation, now known as PVH Corp, which also owns the Tommy Hilfiger label.
In 2003, there was an incident at a basketball game, in which Klein grabbed one of the players while he was in the midst of a play. It led him to go to rehab.
After selling the business, Klein stayed on for three years before leaving the company for good in 2006.
While he never ‘came out’, during the 2008 Vanity Fair article, Klein indicated he had been in love with both men and women.
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Nicholas Gruber
In 2010, media reports first linked Klein with model Nicholas Gruber, who was aged 20 at the time.
Their relationship drew headlines mostly because of their 48-year age difference.
The relationship ended after two years, but inspired a 2018 off-Broadway play Skintight.
Gruber was arrested in 2012 and charged with offences relating to drugs, firearms, identity theft and forgery.
He was jailed for two years and after being released from prison, he sued his former landlord for giving away his belongings to charity.
In 2024, he said he had been sober for three years and planned to write a book about his time with Klein.
Kevin Baker
Klein has been linked with another former model, Kevin Baker, since 2016, when they were photographed together in India.
They were later pictured on some red carpets.
Baker, who is 46 years Klein’s junior, modelled in the early 2010s but doesn’t appear to have worked in the industry since then.
He stays largely out of the spotlight, and is only photographed with Klein by paparazzi when they are out and about together, ofren in New York, where Klein owns a home.
Klein, now 83, has a reported net worth of more than AU$1 billion, and also has homes in Long Island, Miami and California.
In November 2025, a video of Klein stumbling before entering a building in New York went viral after Baker, 36, did not move to help his partner.
The Calvin Klein brand has been back in the spotlight recently over its portrayal in the Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette – apparently only white flowers were allowed in the building – and Dakota Johnson’s recent advertising campaign.
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