Victoria Reggie Kennedy Biography with Photos

Victoria Reggie Kennedy Biography (Wiki, Photos)
Victoria Reggie Kennedy Biography or Wiki: Victoria Anne Reggie Kennedy is an American lawyer and the widow of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Victoria Anne Reggie Kennedy was born in Crowley, Louisiana on February 26, 1954.

Early life and education: Born in Crowley, Louisiana, Vicki Reggie was the second of six children born to Louisiana judge and banker Edmund M. Reggie and Doris Ann Boustany Reggie, a Democratic national committeewoman. She is of Lebanese descent, as all her grandparents were Maronites from Beirut who immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Crowley. The grandparents became important players in the local Roman Catholic church and their children became involved in business and politics.

Victoria’s immediate family was well-off due to money from her mother’s family’s interest in the Bunny Bread baking concern in New Orleans. She was raised in a family that was constantly involved in politics and campaigns. At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, her father helped deliver his state for John F. Kennedy’s unsuccessful bid for the vice presidential nomination. Over time, John Kennedy developed a close social relationship with the family. Doris Reggie cast the only Louisiana delegate vote for Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

Vicki attended parochial schools growing up and was a straight-A student. She attended Newcomb College at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude. There she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was president of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Early career and family: After law school, she clerked for Judge Robert A. Sprecher at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, a prestigious post. As an attorney, she specialized in bank law.

Reggie met her first husband, Grier C. Raclin, a telecommunications attorney (who later became a senior executive at Charter Communications in St. Louis, Missouri), when they clerked together at the U.S. federal court building in Chicago. Their 1981 church wedding was in Crowley, Louisiana and “feted 400 guests with a week’s worth of parties.” Her two children from her marriage to Grier Raclin are Curran Raclin (a son, born 1982) and Caroline Raclin, born 1985.

Following marriage, the couple moved to Washington, D.C. where she practiced banking and savings and loan law and restrucuring and bankruptcy law for Keck, Mahin & Cate. She made partner there, and was known “charismatic and hard-driving” and a tough negotiator in settlement talks and “as a real star” for her ability to work on complicated financial transactions. She and Grier Raclin were divorced in 1990, and she juggled her career with being a single mother to young children.

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