Brooke Shields got an unexpected phone call from her 23-year-old daughter this week. Rowan Henchy dialed her mother right after watching the new Ryan Murphy FX documentary series, Love Story: JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, to give her a heads-up that her 1980s dating history was suddenly back on television. And she wasn’t hiding her shock.
Rowan was in disbelief, asking Shields, “OMG, you were mentioned in Love Story! Is it true?” The 23-year-old wanted to check the facts on her mother’s brief romance with American political royalty, according to E! News’ recent coverage of the interview where Shields broke down the family reaction. Shields laughed it off. She clarified that the Aspen encounter was really “less of a love story and more of a love chapter.”
The FX docuseries dives into John F. Kennedy Jr.’s life leading up to his fatal 1999 plane crash. It tracks his marriage to Carolyn Bessette but also takes a hard look at his string of high-profile romances. Shields is explicitly listed alongside names like Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Shields actually met Kennedy on a ski trip in Aspen, Colorado. They went on an impromptu date, but she admitted on The Howard Stern Show in April 2023 that she declined to sleep with him because she was afraid of getting her heart broken. Her daughters love hearing about her glamorous life in the 80s and 90s, but they usually roll their eyes at the dating stories. As US Magazine confirmed in their look back at the historical fling, the girls ultimately just want their mother to be “just theirs.”
This isn’t the first time Rowan has poked at her mother’s past with JFK Jr. Just this past March in 2026, Rowan posted a viral TikTok directly asking Shields if he was a good kisser. Shields bluntly told her followers he was “one of the best” kisses of her life. Now, with the FX series officially documenting the timeline, her past fling is public record for a whole new audience.