Ethel Kennedy Celebrates Her 96th Birthday Surrounded by Her Family

Ethel Kennedy turned 96 yesterday!

The Kennedy family matriarch—the widow of Robert F. Kennedy—was joined by her children and grandchildren on her birthday, as shown in a photo shared by one of her grandsons, Joseph Kennedy III, on X (formerly twitter). "Happy 96th to the World’s most amazing Gramma!!" he wrote, adding a birthday cake emoji:

Ethel can be spotted in the center-left of the photo, in a light blue sweater, as her family crowds around her. Also pictured in the family snap is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently running for president, with his wife Cheryl Hines. RFK Jr.'s siblings have denounced his presidential run, writing in a statement, "Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment," and calling his candidacy "perilous" for the U.S. Still, it appears that the siblings can at least come together to celebrate their mother's milestone birthday.

Ethel's daughter, Kerry, posted on Instagram yesterday a video montage of her mom, set to Taylor Swift's 2012 song "Starlight." Kerry captioned the video, "Today is my mom‘s 96th birthday! To celebrate her, please listen to this great song that @taylorswift wrote about my parents!"

Back when her album Red came out, Swift shared, "Starlight is a song I wrote actually after seeing a picture of um, Ethel and Bobby Kennedy when they were seventeen. I saw this picture about a year a half ago, and I didn’t know anything about like, what they were doing or what was going on in the picture, but I just thought ‘They look like they’re having the best night.’ And, um, and so I wrote this song about what the night might’ve been like. And um, I ended up meeting Ethel and going and playing it for her and she just loved it. It was such a fun moment when she was just in love with the song and so happy about it and um, it’s just this adorable picture that to me, it just like brought forth all these potentials for how that night could’ve been."

Notably, Taylor Swift previously dated one of Ethel's grandson's, Connor Kennedy.

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