Cheryl Hines finds herself at a crossroads as her marriage to RFK Jr. appears to be nearing its end.
For many, this development was foreseeable—except, perhaps, for Hines herself.
The latest turbulence in their tumultuous relationship stems from the revelations in a new biography, “RFK Jr: The Rise and Fall.”
In the book, author Isabel Vincent discusses Kennedy’s alleged virtual affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi, suggesting that Kennedy’s efforts to salvage his marriage were motivated more by political ambition than affection.
“He believed he couldn’t secure a position in the presidential cabinet if he went through another divorce,” Vincent shared with People magazine.
While this would mark Kennedy’s second official divorce, it would also be the third marriage to dissolve. His ill-fated independent presidential bid in 2024 led to his controversial appointment by President Trump as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
It’s the most prominent, prestigious and powerful job RFK Jr has ever had. He alone, of all the surviving Kennedys, is the only one with political relevance.
‘Maybe because he felt that a lot of his supporters were more traditional about marriage,’ Vincent said, ‘so he did not want to have another divorce. But that was… almost the end of their marriage.’
Weep not for Cheryl Hines, whose marriage to RFK Jr is said to be ‘all but over.’
Who didn’t see that coming – aside from Cheryl, that is?
Vincent writes that Hines and Kennedy exist in a state of limbo: Not fully together yet not truly separated.
Yet.
Hines finds herself in a predicament of her own making. Not that long ago, she — like Nuzzi — was Kennedy’s ‘other woman’.
When they met, RFK Jr was still legally married to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, mother of their four children.
Mary, who had been best friends with Kennedy’s sister Kerry since their teenage years at boarding school, desperately wanted the marriage to work.
Kennedy did not — and he made Mary’s life a misery.
But before that, before Kennedy left the marital home and moved into a new one with Cheryl, just a stone’s throw away, Mary had found Bobby’s diaries.
His sex diaries.
These were very large, thick, red-leather bound books in which, among other things, Bobby recorded his affairs, one-night stands, and what he called ‘muggings’ — women just coming up to him, on the street or at an event, and in effect saying: How about it?
He had named these women, many of whom were known to Mary: actresses, models, the wife of a very famous man, at least one royal, and women she had considered family friends — hosted at her Fourth of July parties and invited into her home.
But Cheryl was different. With Cheryl, Bobby pictured a real future. There they were: photographed on red carpets, all over social media, Cheryl posting from the same places Mary frequented.
April 14, 2012: ‘At Armonk’s Burgers & Shakes in Armonk, NY,’ Cheryl tweeted. ‘So, sooooo good.’
Mary cycled further into depression and drinking. She told one friend that Bobby said the most vile things to her, that she’d be ‘better off dead’ and that, if only she would commit suicide, things would be ‘so much better.’
Cheryl appeared not to show the slightest kindness when it came to Mary’s torment.
And on May 16, 2012, Mary’s death — having hanged herself inside the family barn — cleared the path for the next and third Mrs Robert F Kennedy Jr.
It seems Hines ignored all warnings about marrying him.
As Jerry Oppenheimer wrote in his 2015 biography RFK Jr: Robert F Kennedy Jr and the Dark Side of the Dream, Hines’s pals were ‘mystified’ that she went through with the wedding — despite reports that Bobby had been cheating months before the ceremony.
Oppenheimer quotes Larry David, Hines’s former friend and Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star, telling Bobby that ‘nothing you do will ever rattle her.’
If that doesn’t sound like a license to lie, cheat and betray, I don’t know what does.
Now Cheryl knows what it really means to be a Kennedy wife. Everything she sacrificed for love has not been met with gratitude, let alone any reciprocity.
Once her husband became the face of MAHA and joined forces with Donald Trump, Hines’s life and career in Hollywood was done.
She is persona non grata. She has been exiled by ultra-liberal power players. Her memoir, Unscripted, published last November, was a bomb.
Not even the few high-profile appearances she scored helped — in fact, they hurt.
Her book was competing with Nuzzi’s memoir about her alleged digital affair with ‘The Politician,’ as she called Kennedy, and Hines suffered through a ritual humiliation on Bill Maher’s podcast in which Maher let her book fall to the floor and told her what he does and does not like in the bedroom.
Hines finds herself in a predicament of her own making. Not that long ago, she was Kennedy’s ‘other woman’ (pictured: RFK Jr with his second wife Mary Richardson Kennedy in 2006).
Larry David (pictured), Hines’s former friend and Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star, once told Bobby that ‘nothing you do will ever rattle her.’
And the hits just keep on coming: Not only is RFK Jr estranged from most of the Kennedy clan, but he may be on the ropes with Trump.
His anti-vax, controversial oversight of HHS was the subject of a recent, stinging New York Times magazine piece, in which more than 40 current and former employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — under fire from Kennedy’s HHS — went on the record about what a danger he is.
‘I’m a ER doc, so I handle stress pretty well,’ said former chief medical officer Debra Houry. ‘But this was like being in a mass disaster nonstop for eight months.’
Hines must know the feeling. A dead career in Hollywood, an apparently unfaithful husband whose only currency — political power — may be nearing its end, and the truth of Kennedy wifedom finally, brutally understood.
And perhaps her husband’s cruelest cut: Kennedy, Vincent reports, still calls his late wife Mary ‘the love of my life.’
