By FOX BUTTERFIELD
Published: Thursday, October 1, 1992
ALL of the cooks went to see for themselves. There was Rose Kennedy's longtime cook, Ethel Kennedy's cook from next door in the Kennedys' ocean-front compound and Eunice Kennedy Shriver's cook from just down the street.
Rumor had it that Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the newest member of the family, who married Senator Edward M. Kennedy in July, was in the kitchen actually cooking.
"They all wanted to find out whether we had a Kennedy who could cook," Ted Kennedy said two weekends ago in an interview, simultaneously boasting and jesting.
And it was true. There she was, a tall, poised, self-confident 38-year-old partner in a Washington law firm, preparing a leg of lamb.
In this perfervid political season when professional women have come under fire, Vicki Kennedy seems to have skillfully balanced the sometimes conflicting roles of hard-driving career woman and mother of two young children.
And Senator Kennedy, at the age of 60, after a decade of roisterous bachelorhood, with his hair turning white and his waistline thickening, appears to have settled eagerly into marriage. The quiet wedding came after a year in which Mr. Kennedy had to testify at the Palm Beach, Fla., rape trial of his nephew, William K. Smith, and participate largely as a spectator at the Senate showdown between Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, and Prof. Anita F. Hill.
"I had not ever really intended to get married again," the Senator said, seated in a wing chair covered with a bright floral chintz in the living room of the house that he calls home. His wife was seated adjacent to him in a matching chair. Like less famous newlyweds, they giggled and held hands. On her left hand was a huge diamond surrounded by two sapphires almost as big.
"The people who had been closest to me over the course of my life had disappeared, with that enormous amount of emotion and feeling and love," Mr. Kennedy said. "I thought I probably wouldn't want to go through that kind of experience again."
The house itself is a constant reminder of his family's losses. In fact, the home, with his invalid 102-year-old mother, Rose, living upstairs, is a veritable museum, a shrine to what passes for America's first family.
On a table next to the Senator was a photograph of President John F. Kennedy in a rocker. Nearby was a picture of their father, Joseph P. Kennedy, dressed in morning coat and top hat while serving as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Behind the Senator hung a painting of the destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., named for his eldest brother, who died on a bombing mission over Europe in World War II. Also on the wall were framed obituary cards, for John and Robert Kennedy. Throughout the rambling house are dozens of other pictures of the Kennedy clan as children and adults, of Caroline Kennedy, John's daughter, and Maria Shriver, Eunice's.
Outside, with a bright September sun shimmering on Hyannis harbor, there was another Caroline playing, Vicki Kennedy's 6-year-old from her previous marriage, to a fellow lawyer, Grier Raclin, from whom she was divorced in 1990. Caroline was riding a bicycle with her 9-year-old brother, Curran, under the watchful eye of their nanny.
There have been suggestions by critics that this was a marriage of convenience for Senator Kennedy, that after the Palm Beach incident and his flawed performance at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, he needed to project a new image, especially as he prepares for re-election in 1994. This week there is a new book, "The Senator: My 10 Years With Ted Kennedy," by Richard E. Burke, published by St. Martin's Press. Mr. Burke, who resigned as a top aide to Mr. Kennedy 11 years ago, charges that he and the Senator shared heavy cocaine use in the 1970's and early 1980's.
Mr. Kennedy has called Mr. Burke's book "a collection of bizarre and untrue stories."
As for any connection between his troubled personal life and the marriage, Mr. Kennedy said, somewhat defensively, "I don't see it."
Instead, he and Mrs. Kennedy told a story of a romance that mixed elements of the old-fashioned and the modern, a romance that brought together not only two individuals but also two long-allied families.
The families first encountered each other at the Democratic National Convention in 1956, when Mrs. Kennedy's father, Edmund Reggie, a judge and banker from the small rice-growing town of Crowley, La., swung the Louisiana delegation to support John Kennedy for vice president, over Estes Kefauver.
Judge Reggie later managed Presidential campaigns in Louisiana for John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and, in 1980, Ted Kennedy. To bring the families closer, he even purchased a summer house on Nantucket in 1982. (Last Saturday, Judge Reggie was convicted of defrauding a failed savings and loan, in Federal District Court in Louisiana.)
Although the families had become friends, Mrs. Kennedy did not meet her future husband until she worked as a summer intern in the mailroom of his Senate office after graduating from H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College of Tulane University and before entering Tulane Law School. "We met one day for three minutes, though he has no recollection of it," she said, laughing, her voice still bearing a trace of her Southern upbringing.
Their paths crossed often in more recent years, in Washington and on Cape Cod, because of their families' friendship. In the summer of 1991, she gave a party in Washington for her parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Ted Kennedy naturally was invited.
"He hung out in the kitchen while I cooked," Mrs. Kennedy recalled, "and he helped me pick vegetables off the vine for the salad."
They began dating, and she was impressed by how solicitous he was about her children. "We were going out a lot, and Ted knew I was concerned about spending time away from my children," she said. "So one day he very politely said, 'Maybe I'll come over to your place for dinner.' "
"That started a wonderful thing," she said. "I love to cook, and everyone would gather round in the kitchen, and Ted would help Caroline or Curran with their schoolwork."
For Halloween, the Senator went trick-or-treating with the children, to the neighbors' surprise, sans costume. He also attended their soccer games and took them to Hamburger Hamlet, a favorite of theirs.
"It had evolved into a marvelous routine," Mrs. Kennedy said. Then one night the Senate was at work late and he could not make it for dinner. "I really missed talking to him," she said. "There was a real void. I started to realize more and more that this man was very important in my life."
In January, at a performance of "La Boheme," he proposed.
Some women might have been skeptical; after all, what about Chappaquiddick? Mrs. Kennedy said she was not, adding: "I just thought of marrying the man I was in love with and the family I had known. I didn't think beyond that."
Their engagement had been a secret until Caroline earlier this year talked about it with a kindergarten classmate whose parents happened to be reporters.
Both insisted the transition to married life was going smoothly. "It's been remarkably easy," said Mrs. Kennedy, who specializes in banking at the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate. She has placed her Washington house on the market and has moved with her children into the Senator's home in McLean, Va.
Having known the Kennedys for years has helped, she said. And Senator Kennedy's three grown children -- Kara, 32; Edward Jr., 31, and Patrick, 24 -- have been welcoming, going swimming or playing tennis in Hyannis with Caroline and Curran.
"Thankfully, I've been inundated with children all my life," Senator Kennedy said, leading a tour of the house. He was one of nine brothers and sisters. There are 30 grandchildren of Rose and Joe Kennedy and, so far, 27 great-grandchildren, he calculated.
Mrs. Kennedy, who described herself as "absolutely not a jock," has been learning to play tennis and has been sailing on Mr. Kennedy's old 50-foot wooden hulled schooner rigged sailboat, Mya.
Whatever his troubles over the years, the Senator has returned to Hyannisport from Washington virtually every weekend. The new Kennedy family will continue this agenda. "My mother is here," he said. "All my roots are here."
