Cheryl Hines has praised her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his "beautiful" tribute to his mom Ethel, who died age 96 on October 10, 2024.
"My mom, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, passed peacefully into Heaven this morning," began RFK Jr. going on to call her a "'role model" who "never lost her sense of fun, her humor, her spark, her spunk, and her joie de vivre".
In response, Cheryl, who has not spoken out amid reports of her husband's alleged romance with a reporter, wrote: "This is beautiful. Your mother was very proud of you."
RFK Jr, 70, went on to share insight into childhood growing up in the Kennedy family, writing that Ethel, sister-in-law to the late President John F Kennedy, "invented tough love, and she could be hard on her children when we didn’t live up to her expectations".
"But she was also intensely loyal, and we always knew that she would stand fiercely behind us when we came under attack by others," he added, sharing: "I credit her for all my virtues. I’m grateful for her generosity in overlooking my faults."
Cheryl's support comes almost a month after New York magazine said it had placed one of its reporters on leave after she “engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign".
Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi recently "acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship… while she was reporting on the campaign" the statement read, concluding that "an internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias".
Cheryl has not spoken on the rumors, but the pair were spotted together for the first time earlier in October in Malibu, with Cheryl not wearing her wedding ring. Three other women later came forward claiming to have also had a romantic relationship with RFK Jr.
Cheryl and RFK Jr. have six children together.
Ethel, a human rights activist, was the last bastion of the Kennedy generation, mythologized as Camelot, which included President Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, his wife Jackie Kennedy, and his brother Robert, Ethel's husband, who was a Senator assassinated in 1968 as he ran for President.
RFK Jr. is Ethel's third child but in recent months he has been largely disavowed by the family after he withdrew his unprosperous campaign for president as an independent, and in an even more stark contrast to the political legacy of the Kennedy family, endorsed Donald Trump.
The Kennedy family endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.