Cheryl Hines’ 10-year marriage hits breaking point as ‘lifelong playboy’ RFK Jr.’s sexting scandal humiliates her once again

She has made a career out of playing the long-suffering wife, often humiliated by a husband whose outlandish proclamations scorch professional relationships and destroy friendships.

But with her marriage to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, life has increasingly and uncomfortably imitated art for Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, 58, whose reputation, career and friendships have taken one hit after another thanks to her husband’s political views.

First there was his rabid anti-vaxxer campaign amid the heat of the Covid pandemic, infamously suggesting that things were worse for anti-vaxxers than for Anne Frank.

Last month, Kennedy endorsed Trump, a decision that coincided with his withdrawal from the presidential race and which, by his own admission, could prove “catastrophic” for his marriage.

Hines endured everything. It rained.

Now, it’s the revelation that Kennedy has been involved in an affair with New York magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi that has people really wondering if this is the moment Hines kicks her husband who dumped the bear carcass out into the street.

After all, she has endured a lot. She has seen work projects “put on hold” and has been criticized by liberals for not speaking out against her husband’s presidential election, even though she has been very clear in her disagreement with his stance.

Earlier this month, the hate grew so strong that Bill Maher stepped in to defend Hines from the “hateful far-left imposters” who were “screaming at him via Twitter” by the thousands. According to Maher, “going after the wife… Not even the mob does that.”

It’s been 10 years since Hines and Kennedy tied the knot in a low-key but star-studded celebration in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

She wore a Jackie Kennedy-inspired dress, guests dined on steamed lobster and baked clams, and Natasha Bedingfield sang her hit “Unwritten” to the couple. Today, “Unraveled” would be more appropriate.

Olivia Nuzzi, 31, interviewed Kennedy, who New Yorker Described as a “lifelong ladies’ man” in a profile last month, in November 2023. He did so in the Brentwood California home he shares with Hines and their three dogs.

Five months earlier, from the same home, Hines gave an enthusiastic interview to the New York Times in which she said how much she wanted her husband to feel “loved and supported” by her.

Nuzzi and Kennedy went for walks and exchanged phone numbers, and in the weeks that followed, they exchanged much more — though according to Nuzzi, who has since been suspended from New York magazine, the relationship never progressed beyond the level of sexting.

For his part, Kennedy insisted that he only met Nuzzi (whose engagement with Politico’s chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza was called off a few weeks ago) on that one occasion.

She also called the article resulting from the interview “an offensive piece” and said the relationship was “emotional and digital in nature, not physical.”

It is, however, a low blow for Hines. Once described by Larry David as “the only person in Hollywood who doesn’t have a single enemy,” she has supported her husband at considerable personal cost.

It was David who introduced his Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star to Kennedy in 2006 at a ski weekend fundraiser in Banff, Canada, for Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit co-founded by Kennedy.

Hines had no plans to ski, but told the New York Times: “The next thing I knew, we were on skis and on a chairlift. I looked at Larry and said, ‘What’s going on? ‘ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and pointed, ‘That’s Bobby. ‘”

Both Hines and Kennedy were married to other people when they met. Hines was married to Paul Young, founder of the management firm Principato-Young, with whom she has a daughter, Catherine, 20.

Kennedy was married to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Kennedy filed for divorce from Mary in 2010, but she hanged herself in 2012 before the paperwork was finalized.

By then, Hines and Kennedy were back in touch. They went public with their relationship in October 2011 and married three years later.

Hines later admitted that David never intended to play matchmaker and in fact pestered her about the relationship, saying, “Why would you do that? Are you crazy?”

It’s a question she might be asking herself today. By her own admission when she first met Kennedy, she “didn’t know much about politics in general” and had only a schoolgirl’s knowledge of her future husband’s political dynasty.

Still, as a wife who does not share her husband’s political views, Hines remained publicly loyal to a fault and, as Maher recently noted, received waves of criticism for “not throwing her husband under the bus” when he put his name and influence behind Trump.

Kennedy also spoke out in defense of his wife as she faced a fierce public backlash.

“She’s been a lifelong Democrat,” he told TMZ. “And the idea of ​​me supporting Donald Trump… was, like I said, something she would never have imagined, that she never wanted in her life.”

“I think it makes him very uncomfortable.”

Awkwardness is a feeling Hines must have become all too familiar with over her 10-year marriage to Kennedy.

Just two years ago, following Kennedy’s anti-vaccination comments regarding Anne Frank, things got so bad that he suggested a fake separation in the form of a public announcement that would distance his wife from his statements and decisions.

Hines turned him down, but that was back then. Today, with her romance with Nuzzi, it’s possible that distance will be granted to her for real.