Caroline Kennedy has opened up publicly for the first time about the death of her daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, who passed away in December 2025 at the age of 35 after battling cancer. Speaking at the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony on Sunday, Kennedy described her daughter's life as “beautiful, amazing and too-short.”
“This year, we even have new family members here. I am so happy to welcome Emma Shriver and Garrett and Mary Moran,” said the 68-year-old Kennedy, referring to her son-in-law's parents who were in attendance, according to Us Weekly. “Most of all, we remember Tatiana, who served on the board of this library and represented everything my parents stood for in her beautiful, amazing and too-short life.”
Tatiana Schlossberg's Battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Schlossberg, a journalist, revealed in a New Yorker essay one month before her death that she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood and bone marrow cancer. In her essay, she expressed disbelief at the diagnosis, noting she had been swimming a mile daily while nine months pregnant and considered herself one of the healthiest people she knew. She participated in a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy but later learned her cancer was terminal, with doctors giving her about a year to live.
“My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me,” she wrote.
Family's Grief and Remembrance
On Dec. 30, 2025, the JFK Library Foundation announced Schlossberg's death in a statement shared on Instagram, saying, “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.” Her brother, Jack Schlossberg, spoke to Vanity Fair in May about his ongoing grief, stating, “I don’t think I’ll ever process it. The world will never be the same for me, not only since she passed away, but since she was diagnosed with cancer about two years ago.”
Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, received a round of applause from the audience after her speech, which also welcomed new family members and honored Tatiana's legacy.
