Vicki Kennedy Speaks About Husband's Last Days

Nov. 24, 2009— -- Victoria Reggie Kennedy stood by Sen. Ted Kennedy through 17 years of marriage until cancer took his life. Now she is speaking for the first time since his death about her husband's battle with cancer and the rumors about her own political future.

In an interview scheduled to air Wednesday, Nov. 25 on the "Oprah Winfrey Show," Winfrey asked Kennedy, who appeared with her two children and Ted Kennedy Jr., about her political ambitions.

Following Kennedy's death, there was speculation that he wanted his wife to replace him and that she, too, wanted the seat he had held since 1962.

But Vicki Kennedy denied those rumors.

"No. No. Not for me," she said.

When Winfrey asked if she would ever consider it, Kennedy said, "No."

"We had (a) senator in our household and, no, not for me," she said.

Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 2008. But despite his illness, he was determined to witness the inauguration of then Sen. Barack Obama, Vicki Kennedy said.

It was a promise Ted Kennedy made when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in August.

"When he, when he said at the Democratic Convention he would be there in January and then Barack Obama was elected, what was he saying to you privately?" Winfrey asked.

"Oh, there just wasn't a question about it. He was in training to be there in January," Vicki Kennedy said.

"He was exercising every single day to be strong enough to be there," she said.

The senator did attend the inauguration, but he didn't just rely on his training, he also relied on his faith, his wife said.

In July 2009, Kennedy, a devoted Catholic, asked President Obama to hand deliver a letter to the Pope on his behalf. At his burial in Arlington National Cemetery a month later, that letter was read out loud.

"I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith, I have tried to right my path," Kennedy wrote.

Ted Kennedy Jr. said he was very moved by the letter.

"I thought it was the most beautiful letter I've ever heard," the senator's son said.

"I mean, my father's faith was so important to his life and he, what comes out in the book [Kennedy's autobiography], Oprah, is because he didn't really talk about his religion or his faith. But it is what sustained him," Ted Kennedy Jr. said.

Ted and Vicki Kennedy's Marriage

Vicki was a divorcee and the daughter of Kennedy's old friend and political ally from Louisiana, Edmund Reggie. Reggie was a former judge who had managed the Louisiana presidential campaigns for John F., Robert and Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy and Vicki began dating in 1991 after she invited him to a 40th anniversary party for her parents in Washington. The two had actually met once years before, when she interned in the mailroom of Kennedy's Senate office.

Initially, friends were skeptical of the romance between the two. Vicki Reggie was 20 years his junior and Kennedy had experienced his share of scandals.

But in 1992, at a performance of the opera "La Boehme," Kennedy proposed and the two were married in July the same year.

"If all he wanted was to get married and convince people that he was settling down, he could have picked someone who looked the other way when he caroused," Susan Milligan, co-author of "Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy" and an ABC News consultant told ABCNews.com in August. "Instead, he picked someone who was very much his intellectual equal. People like to think she tamed him, but he picked her for a reason."

Vicki and Ted Kennedy celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary a month before his death.

"Since Vicki Reggie became Vicki Kennedy, Ted Kennedy became a happy man. He had gone through a very troubled period and that just ended" when they met, ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts said shortly after Kennedy's death.

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