Caroline Kennedy’s daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, passed away in December after being diagnosed with leukemia. During a speech at the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony on Sunday, Caroline teared up as she broke her silence on her daughter’s passing.
On December 30, 2025, the Kennedy family went through a heartbreaking tragedy. Caroline Kennedy’s daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, passed away at the age of 35.
She had been diagnosed with leukemia in May of 2024 after giving birth to her second baby.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning,” the JFK Library Foundation, on behalf of Schlossberg’s extended family, wrote on Instagram at the time. “She will always be in our hearts.”
Tatiana Schlossberg was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and told by doctors that she had a year left to live. On November 22, about a month before her passing, she published an essay in the New Yorker, writing about the diagnosis and when she got the news.
“A few hours later, my doctor noticed that my blood count looked strange. A normal white blood cell count is around 4,000 to 11,000 cells per microliter. Mine was a hundred and thirty-one thousand cells per microliter,” Tatiana Schlossberg wrote.
Tatiana Schlossberg passed away amid leukemia diagnosis
“It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia,” Schlossberg recalled, adding that doctors diagnosed her with “a rare mutation called Inversion 3.”
“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me,” she continued. “I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant, I wasn’t sick, I didn’t feel sick, I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew.
Tatiana spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City before being transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
Now, about six months after her death, her mother, Carolien Kennedy, has broken her silence. Speaking at the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony on Sunday, the late President’s daughter broke down in tears as she spoke about her daughter.
Caroline Kennedy breaks silence on daughter Tatiana’s death
During the speech, she praised Schlossberg’s parents-in-law, the parents of her widower, George Moran.
“This year, we even have new family members here. I am so happy to welcome Emma Shriver and Garrett and Mary Moran,” Caroline said, as reported by Page Six.
“Most of all, we remember Tatiana who served on the board of this library and represented everything my parents stood for in her beautiful, amazing, and too short life,” she added, while appearing to get choked up.
Many familiar faces were in attendance at the award ceremony, including former President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nacy Pelosi, and former talk show host David Letterman.
Just weeks after her daughter’s passing, a source told People Magazine that Caroline Kennedy will do everything in her power to make her grandchildren remember their late mother.
“Caroline has to do the same thing her mother [Jacqueline “Jackie” Kennedy Onassis] did with her and [her brother] John, in raising those kids to make sure they remember their mom — and she has the playbook,” the insider said.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Carokine Kenedy and her family.
