Like millions of pop-culture-obsessed Americans, Howard Stern is bingeing FX’s “Love Story” and soaking up the nostalgia of ’90s-era New York, but unlike most of America, the radio host was buddies with the series’ real-life stars, and even graced the cover of JFK Jr.’s George magazine.
“I had done the cover for George magazine,” Stern said on his eponymous SiriusXM radio show Monday. “So I knew John Kennedy Jr., and he actually showed up to the shoot. It’s one of the worst covers I ever did. And I’ve done a lot of bad ones.”
John F. Kennedy Jr. launched George magazine alongside his partner, Michael J. Berman, in September 1995. With the tagline “Not Just Politics as Usual,” the magazine married pop culture and politics in an unprecedented way and aimed to flip the script on mainstream political discourse. The covers were legendary in their own right and featured supermodels, rock stars, Oscar winners and action film stars dressed up as the nation’s first president.
And, of course, radio jokester and provocateur Stern.
“They convinced me to be chopping down a cherry tree with a chainsaw, dressed up in colonial garb, dressed up, like, I guess I was supposed to be George Washington, but George Washington didn’t wear the s— I was wearing,” he continued.
“It was 100 years ago, and I remember I wasn’t doing a lot of magazine covers by choice,” Stern said.
When John Kennedy Jr., whom Stern described as “literally American royalty and the nicest guy in the world,” asked him to pose for the cover of the April/May 1996 issue, themed “The Virtue Issue,” Stern told his agent, “Of course I’ll do it.”
“I went down there, and they were like, ‘It’s George magazine. We have a theme cover. You can’t be in your regular clothes. We want you to be, like, George Washington,” he continued. “They must have caught me on the right day, because I was incredibly amenable. Normally, I would have gone, ‘I’m not wearing this s—.’”
Stern said he got the full supermodel treatment. “You know what John and the photographer did, that thing that they do to supermodels, ‘Gorgeous! You look great! Oh, man, this is the greatest cover. This is our best cover!’ They’re yelling while the guy’s clicking away, and I’m posing like I’m Cindy Crawford, like I’m one of the Hadid sisters,” he continues. “I’m standing there thinking I look handsome with my chainsaw and Louis the 14th [outfit.]”
After Stern went on dragging everything from the “pilgrim shoes” to the “poofy shirt” he wore for the shoot, he revealed that he actually knew Carolyn Bessette Kennedy as well, although he was a bit cagey about how exactly he knew her.
“She was very lovely,” he said. “She was a really nice woman. I don’t want to go into how I knew her, but I knew her.”
When Stern’s co-host, Robin Quivers, pushed him on why he couldn’t divulge how he knew the former Calvin Klein publicist, he said, “I just know enough to keep my mouth shut about that. Some stuff you do have to keep private. But anyway, I knew her. “
According to Disney, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” is FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Hulu and Disney+, with reports that the first five episodes have been streamed more than 25 million hours since the Ryan Murphy series premiered in February.
The show, starring newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy and Sarah Pidgeon as Bessette, will air its finale Thursday.
