When Jacqueline Kennedy married shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968 on his private Aegean island Skorpios, tongues wagged from Greece to Greenwich.

The story line was simple: She married him for money, and he married her for effect. She was, after all, arguably the most famous and beautiful woman in the world, and he was one of the richest, three decades older than she. Whether there was love, or even just affection, or whether this was about mutual security of some kind, it all seemed irrelevant. When her friend Truman Capote asked her why she became Mrs. Onassis, she said, “I can’t very well marry a dentist from New Jersey!”

In fact, Jackie perfectly fit the traditional definition of a trophy wife in a marriage that ended with Aristotle Onassis’s death in 1975, when Jackie was just 45.

Although there have been plenty of high-profile relationships since then that have fit into the trophy category — Marla and then Melania Trump; Ted Turner asking Jane Fonda to stop working — times have changed.

Take last year’s marriage of Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey, also known as the Princess of Bel-Air, the pretty, second wife of Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Brad Grey (they are 34 and 54, respectively).

Turns out that Huysentruyt Grey has a self-proclaimed Napoleonic ambition. She also may have the talent to be her own studio mogul — a West Hollywood fashion studio that serves as a style incubator for the rich and famous. A recent headline in the New York Times declared, “Don’t Call Her a Trophy Wife.”

Is this the new wave?

The recession and the increase in women’s education levels are two major factors feeding a shift in cultural norms since Jackie wore knee-length Valentino and a ribbon in her hair for her Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony. Today, to have a wife (even if she is the second or third) who is smart, has a job, and perhaps even a business plan or a PhD, is now highly valued. It means that the man is not a conspicuous consumer, marrying just for the arm-candy factor. It means that he does not want to debase himself by telegraphing to the world that the only reason he’s with a gorgeous, much-younger woman is because of his money. It means that he is evolved.

And it means that she doesn’t need his cash — she has her own.

Women began outpacing men in educational achievement in 1992 and by 2009, nearly 30 percent of working wives were out-earning their husbands, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women are already receiving the majority of degrees conferred, and the idea of a woman “marrying up” is becoming statistically unlikely.