RADZiWiLL IS HAPPY. DEAL WiTH iT.

THE ABSURDLY PAINFUL , FANTASTICAL LIFE OF THIS GIRL FROM THE CATSKILLS KEEPS BLAZING FORWARD.

BY RiCHARD

PÉREZ-FERiA

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATALIE CHITWOOD exclusively for The Mountains deep space “Do you wake up thinking, ‘I’m so happy to be in this space that I’m grateful and joyful?’ I do. So, in that regard, I’m in love, yeah,” Radziwill says of her surroundings; (opposite) on her wedding day in 1994 with husband Anthony Radziwill. he joys (andpitfalls)ofsurvivingagenuinely interestinglife—alifepreciselylike theonethe woman I’ve been entranced by for the better part of three hours in our e ortless, deeply satisfying Sunday afternoon conversation has led—is that you’ve set yourself up to perpetually reflect on what was, always forced to look back even as you’re moving forward. none of them all at once. How does Radziwill reconcile the overwhelming bigness of her life experiences with the lighthearted, perpetually laughing woman she is today? She simply decided to be happy. And so she is.

The mesmerizing(andstillflawless)Carole Radziwill has had three life-defining eras to reflect upon: her decidedlyhumblechildhoodrunning around her grandparents’farminUpstateNew York’s MountMarion,atinyhamletin the townof SaugertiesnearKingston; her red-hotromance and subsequent marriage to AnthonyRadziwill, abonafideprince whosemother, Lee Radziwill,wasJacqueline KennedyOnassis’sister,withall of what that life entailed including beingbestfriendswithCarolyn Bessette-Kennedy,wife to John Kennedy,Jr.,Anthony’sfavorite cousin and de facto brother; and as a “Bravolebrity,” the term reserved for the most memorable of reality television stars appearing on Bravo, a cable network home to the most zeitgeist-yofshows,including The Real Housewives Of New York City, the high-octane, high-drama program Radziwill co-starred in for a surprising six seasons.

That’s a lot of living right there.

“If I really think about my past, I wouldn’t get out of bed half the time,” she says. “Even if things aren’t going great for me, and this could be about any aspect of my life, it’s OK. I’ll always be OK.” scenes from an italian funeral

She was more than OK during her decade-and-a-half career at ABC News. Of all the labels Radziwill has worn over the years—lover, friend, author, “housewife”—it’s journalist that still fits her best. And why wouldn’t it be? Her work there,mostlywith networkgiant Peter Jennings, is often glossed over for the more clickbait, gotcha! TMZstyle ridiculous headlines. But make no mistake, Radziwill is a first-rate newshoundwhosedocumentary work in Cambodia, India and Haiti have earned her no less than three EmmyAwards, the prestigious Peabody and a GLAADMedia Award (another thing we share). It was while at ABC News that she met AnthonyRadziwill, her colleague and soon-to-be love of her life.

“My friend Robin and I went to the Mount Marion cemetery—which I hadn’t been since 1984 when my grandparents died. They’re buried there. And it’s a big cemetery and we just went row by row by row trying to find Tony and Millie DiFalco. We found it and there’s a ceramic picture of Tony and Millie on the actual tombstone. It’s so them and so hilarious.”

And, yet, as this simply delightful everywoman sitting in front of me continues to prattle on about any number of seemingly disconnected topics—American politics (a passion we share), meaningful relationships, greattheater,excitingcareerprojectsand, yes, even “Scandoval,” the current millennial cheating kerfu e heard around the (reality TV) world—Radziwill remains oblivious to her charm. For someone with so much emotional and psychologicalba ageemanatingfrom her momentous past experiences, her aura, her very essence, is feather light. It’s as if Radziwill decided to put the weight of that past, that old story, away “I’m not overly nostalgic about the past,” Radziwill tells me in her appealing, time-is-money speaking style. “I learned that from my mother-in-law, Lee.”

Ofcoursethisaccomplished,confidentwoman regaling me with her witty asides and piercing intellect was indeed Carole Ann DiFalco from the Catskills; as well as Mrs. Radziwill in East Hampton and Hyannis Port; and a “real housewife” going toe-to-toe with unhinged, famehungry, grown ass women. She’s all of those people and

Iask her about the happiest memory she has of the decade she was with Anthony, her prince. “Oh, Richard…I mean, it’s been so long,” she says looking sad for a moment. “Let me be clear, I’d never want to go back to that time, but it was just this moment in time that was filled with so much success and joy and love and also heartbreak, obviously, and real tragedy. But now, today, it’salsokindofmeldedtogether into this one feeling of…well, I just feel fortunate and grateful to have experienced that life, to have been with my husband, to have had the friends that I had. I’m truly grateful.”

Grateful wasn’t what Radziwill was feeling for years after enduring the worst three weeks of her life. On July 16, 1999, her closest friend, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her husband, John Kennedy, Jr., died in a plane crash near Martha’s Vineyard, MA. The horrible shock and profound sorrow that permeated the country that terrible morning alsoengenderedadisturbingdéjàvuparallel to the still unbelievable death of Diana, Princess of Wales two summers earlier in Paris. Here we were yet again, facing the reality of young, privileged and, it must be said, impossibly beautiful beacons of possibility struck down before elle décor “When we purchased this home in Catskill, we did a full gut renovation. And we’re not talking your typical Catskills décor: Karl Springer dining room table, original Eames chair, a work by Damien Hirst. I made it ‘city girl meets country’ and I love it.” they ever truly took flight. It was senseless and disorienting. And unspeakably sad.

As if losing her closest friends in such an unimaginable(andpublic)mannerwasn’t enough, Radziwill’s husband, her entire world, was at that precise time also at death’s door, stricken with a resurgence of the body’s most powerful, insidious enemy, cancer. Anthony Radziwill was just 40 years old when he passed on August 10, ten days short of his wife’s 36th birthday. I can’t imagine Carole Radziwill’s heartbreak and despair she was enduring during that time.

“Yes, I was in shock for probably a lot longer than I thought then,” Radziwill says. “It was really important for me to be the person who managed the man I loved dearly who was dying of cancer. To be so present and to be able to manage that whole intense situation, to manage his life, and then his death, in a way that I thought I handled with grace. I certainly didn’t give myself credit back then, but now I look back and think, ‘Damn, I did that.’ And, yeah, I’m proud of the way I handled myself then.” the catskills (from top) Radziwill in the late 1960s in Mount Marion, NY near Saugerties; with her siblings in the Catskills; Tony and Millie DiFalco at home near Kingston; “It’s funny…my parents were super straight—they didn’t drink or do anything—but it was all these aunts and uncles at my grandparents’ house all the time who weren’t even related to us at all, whom I just really fell in love with. And as much as the city held this great imagination for me as a kid, Upstate New York was home and I appreciate it even more as I getolder. My grandmother actually grew marijuana in the garden of her house—in our vegetable garden—and sold it to the locals as a side hustle. She was the original entrepreneur. She’d sell it to the Woodstock crowd my grandparents knew.”

But, how does one go on when your world is taken away in a flash?

“You know, I started to resent people who said, ‘Carole’s great; Carole’s fine’ because Carole was not fine,” Radziwill tells me, speaking slightly faster now. “I certainly created the expectation that everything was OK, but my world had just blown up—literally. And I remember when 9/11 happened just two years later what I felt like at that moment because I had gone through my own personal 9/11 where my world blew up, and the three people in my life who I was really very close to all died. Now the world was kind of experiencing what I experienced back in the summer of 1999. And it was so horrific, all of it, for all of us.”

When Radziwill returned to ABC News she was assigned six weeks in Afghanistan covering the interminable war from Kandahar, she recounts a visit to the deserted Kabul Zoo that changed her perspective on su ering and survival.

“I remember one Sunday being at the zoo taking pictures of kids with my Polaroid camera, and mind you there were no animals in the zoo,” she says. “I mean, the lion had been killed. It was terrible. But I noticed that all of these families were in the zoo and everyone was just really nice, wearing their Sunday best and I started taking Polaroids of the kids. I gave them the prints and of course they’d never seen a Polaroid photo before, so this photograph developing in front of their eyes was like magic to them. Their excitement and the wonder you could see in their eyes was nothing short of extraordinary. And right then I had an ‘a-ha’ moment. If these families could feel such joy while literally being surrounded by rubble and destruction, that was a big moment for me. When I got back to New York City, I said, ‘OK, you’re allowed to feel joy.’ In the middle of all this rubble, I still had a life to live, fully.”

Her life now has taken Radziwill back to her childhood haunts by way of co-owning (with two girlfriends) a home in Catskill, NY. “When we purchased the house, we did a full gut renovation,” Radziwill says. “We furnished this home as if it’s my fulltime residence, even though we’re renting it out every now and again. But we’re not talking typical Catskills décor: Karl Springer dining room table, original Eames chair, a work by Damien Hirst. I made it ‘city girl meets country’ and I love it.”

Speaking of love…before I can get my question out, Radziwill tells me there’s many kinds of love, besides the romantic connections we’re hardwired to desire. “Look, I have a love of one’s surroundings,” she says. “As I get older, my space becomes much more important. Of course, yes, the love of a romantic partner, or the love of friends and family are always important, but I’ve learned that, for me, the love of my surroundings, the love of where I am physically, spiritually and emotionally has become most important of all.Do you wake up thinking, ‘I’m so happy to be in this space that I’m grateful and joyful?’ I do. So, in that regard, I’m in love, yeah.” so to be in this and

For someone who has had more than her fair share of eyebrowraising, PageSix-worthyromanticsuitors—

George Clooney and Ralph Fiennes, anyone?—it was her most recent serious relationship with Adam Kenworthy, a chef more than two decades her junior, who seemed to be her best fit. The relationship, which lasted for several years, was on fulldisplay in multiple seasons of The Real Housewives of New York City. And it seemed, in a word, sweet.

“Yes, Adam is much younger than me, but I never felt that when I was with him,” Radziwill says. “I like to say, ‘I grew up, but I never got old.’ So when I met Adam, our curiosity level was the same and I was open to learning new things as I always am. And being so much younger, he taught me things about di erent kinds of music, for example. I love that he used to come to my house on his bike or his skateboard and we’d skateboard around the city. To me, that was a blessing. And that relationship lasted a long time.” abc news (from top) Radziwill met her future husband when they both worked at ABC News; on assignment in Cambodia in 1994; with a press o cer at the US military base in Kandahar; at Charleston Air Force Base en route to Afghanistan; “By the time I met Anthony, I’d been working for Peter Jennings at ABC News for several years, so we met on a more level playing field than if I had just met him as Carole DiFalco from Upstate New York. At the time, he was living on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side and had this big, social, famous family.” anthony & lee Carole, in a Carolina Herrera wedding gown, and Anthony at their 1994 wedding at Lee Radziwill’s East Hampton estate (both mother and son wore Giorgio Armani); “When I met Anthony’s mom, Lee, I was nervous in the way that you’re this new girlfriend. I remember thinking how beautiful and vibrant she was—and so glamorous. When she became my mother-in-law, Lee was always quite friendly. And she obviously was very happy that Anthony had found someone. Looking back now, who knows if Lee would’ve preferred Anthony to be with some fabulously glamorous socialite. I mean, I didn’t go to Dalton. I was literally a girl from the other side of the tracks.”

But the relationship I still wonder about was the one Radziwill ultimately agreed to have with reality television. I mean, her everso-slightlyshockingdecision to join the RHONY castwasas unexpected as it was curious. Two di erent worlds coming together.

I mean, those decidedly Upper East Side boozy mavens didn’t seem to have much in common with the downtown-living, award-winning war documentarian. Or did they?

“Oh my goodness, I’ve neverbeenaroundwomenlikethat!” Radziwill tells me, laughing. “I wasn’t used to being competitive and all that, but I’d never been around women who would talk like they talked or drank like they drank. I just thought they were very funny. There john & carolyn

(left) John Kennedy, Jr. dancing with newest member of his family; (below) Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is thoroughly enjoying her wedding day with Anthony and Carole Radziwill; “For two summers, Anthony and I shared a Bridgehampton beach house with John and that’s when I first met him. I’ll never forget, he walked out of the bedroom very early in the morning, and came over and said, ‘Oh, I’ve heard so much about you. So nice to meet you.’ And then he shook my hand and said, ‘Hi, John Kennedy.’ He actually said his name, John Kennedy. John—as well as his sister, Caroline—never made me feel like they were up here and I was down there. They just never made me feel that way at all. They’re very earthy. They were always lovely to me.

That same weekend, John brought his then new girlfriend, Carolyn, who was a big shot at Calvin Klein and couldn’t be nicer. Carolyn was the equivalent of what they now call a girl’s girl. She connected with women and always had a lot of girlfriends. I just thought she was great. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this girl.’ At that moment, I envisioned this whole summer hanging out with this cool girl, since I thought of myself then as a news nerd. Carolyn was authentic before authenticity became a catchphrase.” was definite comedy to them and the fact that one of my castmates called herself “The Countess’…well, I thought this would be fun to do. But I’d never watched the show. And I also thought that after a couple years, I could leave. I made a mistake in thinking you could join something like this—that you can join the circus and that you could leave the circus at any time. But once you join the circus, and you become a circus performer, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

I’ve often wondered, once the all-star housewives leave the playing field, what would they’ve done di erently given a second chance.

“My one little regret is I did make myself smaller to be on the show,” she says softly. “I never thought I was above anyone, for sure. I didn’t want to come across like I was above any of the women because everyone had their own di erent life experience, you know, and so I didn’t want to come across that way at all. And I didn’t feel that way and never did. But there were a lot of times during a lot of conversations where I could have said, ‘Well, you know, I was in Afghanistan during the war’…‘I was in the Gulf War’…‘I used to spend a lot of time in refugee camps in Cambodia.’ I’d been there, I’d seen that. But I never talked about any of that. So my only regret was making myself smaller to fit in with the women. I think I would’ve been considered much more formidable and maybe even more of a target in some ways. But, in the end, I didn’t want to show o .”

Would she everconsider returning to the sceneof the crimein,say,as one of the housewives invited to go on the spino TheRealHousewives: Ultimate Girls Trip onPeacock? Who would she want to go with?

“Oh, dear…,” she says, a bit uneasy for the firsttimeinourlong conversation.“I’dgoonagirls trip with the coolest, most fun chick from each city, but I don’t know who that is because I don’t watch Housewives.”

So, what now? What does the next act in this fascinating mosaicthathasbeen Carole Radziwill’s life look likefrom here?“Interestingly enough, I’ve beentalking to a London-basedcompanyabout potentially turning my memoir, WhatRemains,intoa one woman play. I’ve never written a play before…I’ve been working on a draft. It’s really very exciting.”

Speaking of What Remains: A Memoir Of Fate, Friendship & Love, that’s how I initially became aware of Radziwill. Reading her powerful yet surprisinglyunsentimentalaccount,Ibecameenraptured by Radziwill’s clarity on those pages. I often still think about her conclusion encapsulating all the sadness, all the pain. Radziwill wrote: “Ultimately what remains is a story. In the end, it’s the only thing any of us really owns.” Even now, that passage packs a punch.

The first time I interviewed Radziwill was a decade ago just prior to the release of her latest tome, The Widow’s Guide To Sex And Dating: A Novel (yep, another must-read best-seller). When I ran into her (looking gorg, by the way) about a month later in Lower Manhattan at the launch party for the new season of The Real Housewives, Radziwill told me how much she loved the article I wrote about her, saying, “It was memorable—and that’s everything you should want it to be.” I was flattered and once again taken in by this easygoing mix of smarts and edge having a cocktail in front of me. In that precise moment, I definitely saw why so many bold-faced gentlemen were enraptured by one Carole Radziwill. And it was e ortless on her part.

During the recent all-day shoot for this story—we captured the photogenicRadziwillinherchicCatskillshome—Ilookedupat the absurdly perfect, cloudless sky and recalled my favorite passage from The Widow’s Guide I asked Radziwill if she could guess what that quote she wrote more than a decade ago may be. “Blue skies can be misleading,” she said triumphantly, smiling to herself, clearly delighted to be right. At that exact moment, we both looked up at that impossibly blue sky and laughed. Blue skies be damned, there’s a joyous life yet to be lived. And I’m here for all of it. So, yes, what remains of Carole Radziwill today is a woman who’s indeed happy and ready for whatever comes next. And that, too, will surely be epic.