Carole Radziwill Reveals the ‘Cursed’ Connection Between Jackie Kennedy and Kim Kardashian

Carole Radziwill is opening up about a famous family heirloom that came with an unexpected story.

The What Remains author, 63, shared the story during an appearance on Haley Sacks‘ Financial Tea podcast, on Thursday, September 10. “I did inherit Jackie Kennedy‘s Cartier watch. I ended up selling it at auction,” Carole said

After Sacks suggested the watch was “cursed,” Carole explained, “There was something about that watch that linked all of us — Jackie Kennedy in the ’60s, me in the ’90s, and then my best friend in the 2010s — and all three were widowed in their 30s.”

Carole was married to Anthony Radziwill, Kennedy Onassis’ nephew and John F. Kennedy Jr.’s first cousin, from 1994 until his death from cancer in August 1999. JFK Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, died in a plane crash the previous month.

During her appearance on Financial Tea, the Real Housewives of New York City star admitted she eventually decided to auction the watch at Christie’s because she hoped Cartier would buy it back.

“So I had this idea that, which I think I got from an Indiana Jones movie, like when you return something that’s cursed to its place of origin and that it breaks the curse,” Carole explained. “So I decided to auction the watch at Christie’s with the hope of Cartier bidding on it and buying it back.”

That plan took an unexpected turn when a reality TV star became the buyer. “At the very last second of the auction Kim Kardashian bought it,” Carole told Sacks. “And we had all these mutual friends. I just thought it boomeranged back at me.”

Carole explained, “So she heard rumblings of this curse through mutual friends and so in fact she did want to return it.” According to Carole, Kardashian, 45, “ended up paying for it and she called Christie’s and said ‘I’m not going to take possession of the watch,’ and that they should sell it privately, so that did happen.”

She added a few years later, someone sent her a clip from Kardashian’s reality show in which Kardashian appeared to be wearing the watch and talking about it. “So then I called Christie’s like ‘where’s the watch? What’s going on?’ And they told me that it was still in the vault under Rockefeller Center which is where Christie’s is,” Carole said, meaning that Kardashian was wearing a different timepiece. “And I said, ‘You need to call Cartier.’… And they eventually returned it.”

The story comes as Carole returns to The Real Housewives of New York City for season 16 after previously leaving the Bravo series in 2018.

As Star previously reported, Carole said filming her RHONY comeback brought up painful memories of Kennedy and Bessette as renewed interest in the late couple — thanks to the FX series, Love Story — put their lives back in the spotlight. Per USA Today, she admitted she felt “a little grief” for them and her late husband, Anthony, during almost “the whole time” she filmed season 16.

Additionally her comeback has brought renewed scrutiny over her past friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell and her name appearing in files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

“I felt like this isn’t something that I shy away from,” Carole said earlier this month, per People. “It’s not something I shy away from because I think, really, it’s important to talk about it. It’s important to be transparent.”