Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s marriage nearly ended over an alleged affair he had with a reporter four decades his junior, a forthcoming biography claims.
The biography, RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise, cites insiders who say Kennedy’s marriage to actress Cheryl Hines, 60, nearly fell apart in 2024 after the journalist Olivia Nuzzi, 33, said she had a “digital” sexting affair with him.
Nuzzi was put on leave and then fired by her then-employer, New York magazine, because she “engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign.” That official turned out to be the thrice-married Kennedy scion.
Kennedy, 72, has repeatedly denied the affair.
Publicly, Hines had brushed off the scandal, telling The Katie Miller Podcast, “I think you always have to consider the source, right? So that’s where I start, and then it ends with a conversation with Bobby.”
“I don’t know this person. Don’t know their intentions,” she said of Nuzzi. “I could guess, but I won’t. But you can if you want.”
Vincent, a New York Post investigative reporter, writes that things were different behind the scenes, with sources saying the affair nearly led to divorce.
“After the Olivia Nuzzi scandal, it was really played down, [as if] Cheryl Hines was in Europe and everything was OK,” Vincent writes, according to an excerpt obtained by People. “Everything was not OK. That was a really bad time.”
Vincent continued, “He really tried to make it up to her because he felt he couldn’t be in the presidential Cabinet and have another divorce.”
Vincent speculated that the divorce may not have played well with Trump voters as Kennedy joined the MAGA coalition—though they have no issue with Trump’s trio of marriages and alleged infidelity.
“Maybe because he felt that a lot of his supporters were more traditional about marriage, so he did not want to have another divorce,” Vincent wrote. “But that was... almost the end of their marriage.”
Now, nearly two years after the affair came to light, Vincent claims the Kennedy-Hines marriage is not back to what it once was.
“From what I understood, they’re somewhat together, but they’re not always together,” she writes. “She’s not accompanying him on every single thing he’s doing.”
For her part, Nuzzi has maintained that the relationship was “never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict.” She has said the affair was entirely online. She claims that she and Kennedy “sexted” via texts and phone calls.
Nuzzi was engaged to former Politico reporter Ryan Lizza at the time of her affair. They split over the affair and have engaged in a nasty back-and-forth on the matter, which includes Lizza sharing a detailed Substack series about his ex, Kennedy, and other alleged cheating.
For his part, Kennedy claims he has met her Nuzzi only once, “for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”
Kennedy was married twice before marrying Hines. He was married to his first wife, Emily Black, for 12 years, with whom he had two children.
He then married Mary Richardson Kennedy in 1994, the same year he divorced Black. They had four children together. She died by suicide in 2012 while the pair were involved in divorce proceedings.
