Maurice Tempelsman, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ longtime partner up until her death, has died at 95 after complications from a fall, according to his son, Leon.
Tempelsman was a Belgian-American jewel tycoon who made a fortune selling diamonds from Africa’s Gold Coast.
However, he was perhaps best known for his relationship with Kennedy Onassis, who he was fiercely protective of and was a caretaker to in the lead up to her death in 1994.
Tempelsman was an influential donor to the Democratic Party, giving approximately $500,000 in the 1990s alone, and had a close relationship with Democratic leaders, including Onassis’ late husband, President John F. Kennedy, whom he met while Kennedy was still a Massachusetts senator.
Although they had known each other for about 30 years in total, Tempelsman and the former first lady grew closer in the last decade of her life.
After her second husband, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, died in 1975, Tempelsman became Kennedy Onassis’ financial adviser and reportedly quadrupled her generous $26 million inheritance, according to The New York Times.
Tempelsman was an extremely private man and also did his best to protect Onassis’ privacy in her final years, shooing away photographers who caught them on their walks in Central Park.
After Kennedy Onassis was told she had lymphatic cancer in 1993, Tempelsman moved his office into the apartment where they lived together.
He was at her bedside when she died of lymphatic cancer at 64 in 1994 and stood next to her children at her funeral in New York and at her burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
During their courtship, they took pleasure in refined living, dining in restaurants on the Upper East Side of New York City, spending weekends at Kennedy Onassis’ New Jersey horse farm, and summers sailing at her Martha’s Vineyard estate and sailing on his yacht. They also entertained high-profile guests, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Tempelsman, who emigrated with his Orthodox Jewish family from Antwerp to New York in 1940 to escape Nazi persecution, got his start working for his father, who was also a diamond broker.
According to declassified Kennedy administration documents obtained by Insight, Tempelsman allegedly meddled in African politics during the Cold War.
While he sometimes lent his support to causes for African liberation, Templesman also spearheaded the ouster of socialist-leaning leaders and supported the installation of business-friendly authoritarians in Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire, Insight reports.
Tempelsman is survived by his three children from his marriage to Lilly Bucholz, who he wed in 1949 but split with years before he began his relationship with Kennedy Onassis. In addition to his son, Leon, and daughters Rena and Marcy, he is survived by six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He was buried on Monday in New Jersey.
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