Mr. McKean left for China and Ms. Townsend bought a cheap phone card and called nightly. Then she joined him for four months, traipsing around Southeast Asia, hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge, traveling the Mekong Delta by boat. They later settled in Washington. Mr. McKean, now 27, enrolled in American University’s law school and now clerks for a judge in Rockville, Md. Ms. Townsend, 29, is completing a master’s in foreign service and a law degree at Georgetown. Their talk turned to raising children, to social justice and making the world a better place. It was clear to everyone who knew them that they would marry. “They’re like bubbles in a nice glass of Champagne,” said Sally Schiff, a good friend. “They pop like that.” Last March, they went to Tiffany’s to pick out a ring. Mr. McKean figured on proposing later on. Once outside the store, however, Ms. Townsend slipped on the ring and ran with it, laughing. “I said, ‘Maeve! This is the parking lot of the store. This is not what I planned,” Mr. McKean recalled. “She said, ‘Just propose to me now.’ You can’t argue with that logic, so right there in the parking lot I told her I loved her and I wanted her to marry me.” “We’re very much in love,” Ms. Townsend said. “And we’re kind of cheesy, too.”
Mozambique RPCV Maeve Kennedy Townsend marries David McKean
Maeve Townsend and David McKean
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: March 27, 2009
MAEVE KENNEDY TOWNSEND is what most people would call a free spirit.
Growing up in America’s most famous Democratic clan, Ms. Townsend, a granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and a daughter of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Maryland lieutenant governor, was “always playful, a kind of Annie Oakley character,” says her father, David L. Townsend.
She is the kind of woman who would, and did, join the Peace Corps and move to Mozambique after college; the kind who would, and did, have a tiny apple tattooed discreetly on her lower back because she eats apples all the time; the kind who would, and did, wear sparkly sneakers under an elegant strapless Italian-designed silk and organza wedding gown.
But that’s getting ahead of the story, which begins in 2003, with a letter from 21-year-old David McKean to the San Diego office of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat.
“Dear Ms. Townsend,” is the way its author began, addressing the 23-year-old woman he knew to be in charge of hiring for that district office. With one year left at Berkeley, where he was on the improv comedy team, Mr. McKean was headed home to San Diego for the summer and angling for an internship.
Their flirtatious banter began almost as soon as he got the job. “She was so cute and really fun and bubbly,” he said. She found him “funny and very handsome,” but also off limits; Mr. McKean had a girlfriend.
That did not stop him from calling after he returned to Berkeley. They talked endlessly about everything, from literature to politics. Then she quit answering the phone, no longer willing to “talk for a couple of hours to a guy who doesn’t want to see me.”
The following summer, Mr. McKean, newly graduated and single, returned to San Diego, with plans to teach English in China that fall. His mother, Dinah McKean, sensed her son was going through a rough time, and urged him to take Ms. Townsend to a baseball game. The result? “Instant chemistry,” Mrs. McKean said.
But still not a romance — not until Ms. Townsend asked Mr. McKean to a black-tie benefit. He declared the evening a date, and he arrived at her door with flowers.
They had their first kiss that night — “It was a good kiss, and that’s how I knew,” Mr. McKean said — and soon they were telling white lies when asked how long they had been together. “We were madly in love and we had been together, like, three weeks,” he said.
A cross-country drive that summer included a stop in Hyannis Port, Mass., for Mr. McKean to meet the family: grandmother Ethel, great-uncle Teddy and a slew of cousins.
“It was kind of surreal,” he said. “We’d sit around and chitchat; we sat on the porch and sang songs.” He wasn’t thinking of marriage. “I was just on a fun trip with my girlfriend.”
Mr. McKean left for China and Ms. Townsend bought a cheap phone card and called nightly. Then she joined him for four months, traipsing around Southeast Asia, hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge, traveling the Mekong Delta by boat.
They later settled in Washington. Mr. McKean, now 27, enrolled in American University’s law school and now clerks for a judge in Rockville, Md. Ms. Townsend, 29, is completing a master’s in foreign service and a law degree at Georgetown. Their talk turned to raising children, to social justice and making the world a better place. It was clear to everyone who knew them that they would marry.
“They’re like bubbles in a nice glass of Champagne,” said Sally Schiff, a good friend. “They pop like that.”
Last March, they went to Tiffany’s to pick out a ring. Mr. McKean figured on proposing later on. Once outside the store, however, Ms. Townsend slipped on the ring and ran with it, laughing. “I said, ‘Maeve! This is the parking lot of the store. This is not what I planned,” Mr. McKean recalled. “She said, ‘Just propose to me now.’ You can’t argue with that logic, so right there in the parking lot I told her I loved her and I wanted her to marry me.”
“We’re very much in love,” Ms. Townsend said. “And we’re kind of cheesy, too.”
They were wed on March 21 at the Woman’s National Democratic Club, a sprawling Washington mansion, where Ethel Kennedy, in a silver suit, pronounced herself “thrilled” that her first grandchild had married.
“It’s a real joy to be around them,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “They bounce off each other.”
There were toasts and remembrances and a table of family photos, including one of R.F.K. walking his dog. Mark Bailey, husband of Rory Kennedy, had some thoughts for the groom.
“Buckle up,” Mr. Bailey advised.
It was a Kennedy reunion tucked inside a celebration of a couple whose friends call them, “Maevid.” There were green apples on the tables for centerpieces. The couple led guests in a Cat Stevens song — “If You Want to Sing out, Sing Out”— during the ceremony. “If you want to boogie to it, you can,” declared James H. Wexler, a Massachusetts District Court judge and a Kennedy family friend, who officiated.
When it was over, the bride lifted her skirt, a cascade of silk and organza, ever so slightly above her ankles, happily showing off her sparkly sneakers to anyone who would look.
