Virginia Joan Kennedy ( Bennett, born September 2, 1936) is an American socialite who was the first wife of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. Early life Virginia Joan Bennett was born at Mother Cabrini Hospital in New York City. She was raised in a Roman Catholic family, in suburban Bronxville, New York. Her parents were Harry Wiggin Bennett Jr. (1907–1981), and Virginia Joan Stead (1911–1976). Her father was a graduate of Cornell University and later worked as an advertising executive. Bennett grew up with one younger sister, Candace "Candy," (born 1938). She attended Manhattanville College (then a Sacred Heart college), in Purchase, New York. Manhattanville was also the alma mater of her future mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, as well as her future sisters-in-law Jean Kennedy Smith and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. In 1982, Bennett received an MA in Education from Lesley College, now known as Lesley University. As a teenager, she worked as a model in television advertising. Marriage, family and divorce In October 1957, at the dedication of a gymnasium at Manhattanville College in memory of another Kennedy sister, Kathleen – who had died in a plane crash in France in 1948 – Jean Kennedy Smith introduced Joan to her younger brother Edward ( Ted), then a student at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. The couple became engaged quickly and Joan grew nervous about marrying someone she did not know that well. Joe Kennedy insisted that the wedding should proceed, and they were married on November 29, 1958, in Bronxville, New York. The small family wedding was held just a few weeks after Ted's older brother U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy won his landslide re-election for his United States Senate seat representing Massachusetts in 1958. Joan had three children with Ted Kennedy: Kara Kennedy (1960–2011), Edward M. Kennedy Jr. (Ted Jr.) (b. 1961), and Patrick J. Kennedy (b. 1967). Two of their children were cancer victims. Ted Jr. developed bone cancer at age 12, which resulted in the removal of a portion of his right leg in 1973, and Kara was treated for lung cancer in 2003. Daughter Kara Kennedy died of a heart attack at age 51 on September 16, 2011. Ted suffered a severe back injury in a 1964 airplane crash, while campaigning for his first full Senate term. Joan assumed the full campaign-appearance schedule for his successful re-election in 1964. He had earlier won a