This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.“Love Story” Finale Teaser Shows JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Consider Separation Before Fatal Plane Crash

Liza EsquibiasWed, March 25, 2026 at 6:13 PM UTC

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Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly in Love StoryCredit: FX -

In a teaser for the finale of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, the couple's marital struggles come to the forefront

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, portrayed in the FX show by Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon, died in a plane crash in 1999

They sought marriage counseling and considered separating in the months before their tragic deaths

The season finale of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette shows the couple face challenges in their relationship before their deaths.

In a new teaser for the highly-anticipated episode of the FX series, which airs on Thursday, March 26, and streams on Hulu, Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon’s John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy attend marriage counseling in the months leading up to the fatal plane crash.

“I would advise a separation,” the counselor tells the teary-eyed pair in a clip.

The next clip in the teaser shows them in an elevator together as John pulls Carolyn in for a kiss and declares, “That's not what I had in mind.”

“How do we know we won't hurt each other?” she later asks, to which he admits, “We don't.”

“But you’re the one thing in my life I'm destined for,” John continues. “I love you.” Carolyn replies, “I love you too."

John and Carolyn met in 1992 and got married in a top-secret ceremony in 1996. They died three years later, when John, who was 38 at the time, was flying a plane with both Carolyn, 33, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, 34, as his passengers when it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on July 16, 1999.

This week’s PEOPLE cover story looks back at John and Carolyn’s relationship and the impact that the relentless paparazzi, the impending death of John’s cousin Anthony Radziwill from cancer and the public scrutiny had on their lives.

“It was just a perfect storm of a young couple trying to figure it out: how they’re going to live, dealing with a struggling business [John’s political magazine George] and just a s---load of pressure during a super-hot summer,” said a confidant. “It was a pressure cooker.”

Another friend added, “Had he not crashed the plane, it would have been a meaningless few weeks of tension, but it took on a life of its own because it was the last chapter of their lives.”

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy at the Municipal Art Society gala.Credit: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive/Getty

Their close friend Sasha Chermayeff recalled Memorial Day 1999, when John broke his ankle in a paragliding accident. By then, she described him and Carolyn as being “so disconnected” heading into that last summer.

“That’s what I remember most about that weekend,” Chermayeff said. “John was saying, ‘She’s so shut down.’ He meant emotionally. They were shut down from each other. They were at a very important crux.”

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In the following weeks, they cared for Anthony, who was in and out of the hospital and ultimately died less than a month after John and Carolyn’s crash. By then, John had told a few friends that he and Carolyn were no longer intimate. While he wanted to have kids, she was fearful of raising a family amid the paparazzi.

They began marriage counseling that summer and looked for a second home in Snedens Landing. For the Fourth of July, they spent time with Chermayeff and Brown University pals Robbie Littell and Santina Goodman.

“John used to say, ‘I want to be with my family, not my family,’ ” Chermayeff said. “We were his family in a different way, but our being there was also a way to not confront what he and Carolyn needed to confront. They hadn’t figured out how to communicate with each other.”

The weekend of their deaths, John planned to fly to the July 17 wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Mass., with Carolyn, who had changed her mind about going after first saying no.

According to John’s biographer and friend Steven M. Gillon, author of America’s Reluctant Prince, “He told a friend, ‘If she’s done, I’m done.’ He said they needed to make changes. Otherwise the marriage was going to be over.”

“He was fighting to turn his life around,” Gillon noted. “He was talking to people about ways to turn George into an online magazine. There was hope with his wife. The fact that she went to the wedding was a sign that she was trying. John never gives up.”

John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Carolyn Kennedy during the annual White House Correspondents dinner on May 1, 1999 in Washington, D.C.Credit: Tyler Mallory/Liaison/Getty

On July 16, 1999, John told his flight instructor Bob Merena that he didn’t need his help piloting the flight to Cape Cod, where he and Carolyn were going to drop off her sister on their way to the wedding. At 8:39 p.m., the plane took off, and no one heard from them again.

The following afternoon, small fragments of the plane and a few belongings — including Lauren’s garment bag and a bottle of prescription pills labeled with Carolyn’s name — began to wash ashore. On July 21, their bodies were recovered from the bottom of the ocean.

“I like to believe they would have survived as a couple, and love would have prevailed,” Chermayeff said. “They had it in them to give it another shot.”

The finale of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette airs Thursday, March 26, at 9 p.m. ET on FX. Past episodes are available to stream on Hulu.

For more on the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, pick up PEOPLE's special edition, available now on newsstands and here.

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