Marion Fay "Mimi" Alford (née Beardsley; born May 7, 1943) is an American woman who had an affair with President John F. Kennedy while she served as an intern in the White House press office between 1962 and 1963.
Despite the affair's consuming influence over her life at the time, Alford managed to keep the illicit trysts a secret for 40 years, until clues were leaked in 2003.
[9] Alford said that she and the President did not have sexual relations after August 1963 when JFK's son Patrick died, though she retained her position in the White House.
[11] The last time she saw Kennedy, on November 15, 1963, he gave her $300 cash as a wedding present and asked that she buy "something fantastic" to wear, "then come back and show me."
[22][23][24] At Gamarekian's request in 1964, this part of her interview was permanently sealed, but Dallek persuaded her to unseal it so that he might include in his biography mention of a "tall, slender, beautiful" intern among Kennedy's White House diversions, in the context of his argument that Kennedy was undistracted from duty by health troubles or women.
[25][26] Reporters hastened to identify the intern and on May 13 the New York Daily News ran a front-page teaser headline, "Fun and Games with Mimi in the White House", for its exposé, "JFK had a Monica".
[27] Later when "Once Upon a Secret" was published, Mimi wrote that not only she stumbled upon Barbara Gamarekian's oral interview at JFK Presidential Library, but also a Christine Camp's oral interview, and in particular the one made on Nov 24, 1969 referred to Mimi Alford without naming her, but some terms were strikingly similar to Barbara Gamarekian's---
[28]After the intrusive press attention of 2003, Alford felt she should try to take control of the story of her own life, and she began to write with her husband's encouragement.
[1] Originally subtitled My Hidden Affair with John F. Kennedy, Alford's book was published in April 2011 by Hutchinson Radius,[29] an imprint of Penguin Random House Group, and marketed as "a woman's coming-of-age story".
[1] According to the New York Times, "Ms. Alford claims to be completely purged of guilt, grief and baggage by the cleansing process of acknowledging past mistakes.