Tina Lebanese: The woman “a prize” between Onassis – Niarchos, weddings and tragic ending

Tina Lebanese was one of the most beautiful women of the 20th century, raised like a princess. Two powerful shipping men, O and O, claimed it and eventually married it. He lived a life full of money and sparkle. In her charm will fall two of the richest people in the world, Greek shipowners Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos who will claim the heart of Tina Livanos and will eventually both win it with some years’ delay. Only the price in all this glowing life was her own life, which ended in glory, only at 45 years old, having previously buried her son. Born March 19, 1929 in London, the youngest daughter of Stavros Livanos and Arietta Zafiraki, Tina Lebanese had a life as a fairy tale. He grew up between London and New York, attended the Villa Maria monastery in Montreal and then a boarding school in Greenwich, Connecticut. Stavros Niarchos and the marriage to Onassis Stavros Niarchos first asked Tina Lebanese’s hand to her father, who refuses. His daughter was too young for weddings and her older sister Eugenia had a priority. Aristotle Onassis does not waste his time and asks for Tina Lebanese’s own hand. He will get the exact same answer but “no” Aristos did not accept it. Besides, Onassis hasn’t learned to lose easily, and everything he put into his mind did. This time the target was a woman named Tina Lebanese, and she would make her his. And because the persistent defeats, Aristotle Onassis manages, after three years of close siege, to persuade Stavros Lebanese to give his blessing and marry the 17-year-old then Tina when he was only 40. The marriage of Aristotle Onassis and Tina Lebanese took place in 1946 in New York with shipowner Andreas Empirico as best man and was one of the biggest secular events of the year. Stavros Niarchos married Tina’s sister, Eugenia, a year later in 1947, and essentially the two “eternal enemies” are members of the same family. Not that this brought them closer. The first years of Tina Lebanese’s married life with Aristotle Onassis will roll beautifully, with pleasant personal moments, gifts and luxurious travels. Their happiness will be completed with the coming of two children, Alexander and Christina. Gradually, however, their ties fade and are no longer together unless they are to be the happy hosts. Tina knows that Onassis cheats on her and sometimes pays him the same coin. The entrance of the opera singer, Maria Callas, to his life will turn around. The shipowner will strongly fall in love with the talented high voice to the point where she and her husband will call, in the summer of 1959 to spend the holidays with him and his wife in their boatboat “Christina”. At first things look like romance, Lebanese and Callas hang out, until the moment that Onassis’s wife begins to suspect the nature of her husband’s relationship with Callas. Tina Livanu was unable to forgive infidelity and made the decision to leave the chamber and seek a divorce. Lebanese’s affair with Brazilian millionaire Reinaldo Herrera will make Onassis furious. What if he hadn’t been a faithful husband. Eventually, the divorce will come out after a year. The early 1960s found Tina Lebanese officially separated from Onassis. A year later, in 1961, he will marry British John Spenser – Churchill, Marquis of Blancford and later 11th Duke of Marlborough. The couple will be together for 10 years, not having children, and a year later, in 1972, they will divorce. On 4 May 1971 a tragedy knocks on the door of the Lebanese and Niarcho family. Eugenia’s sister leaves life at the age of 43 at the cottage of the Niarchou family in Spetsopoula, leaving four young children orphaned. A year after her sister died and a few months after her divorce, Tina Lebanese will marry Stavros Niarchos. It may have taken years to make her his, but their happiness won’t last long. Fate held for the end the toughest game for Tina Lebanese. After taking off from the Greek airport, it will be fatal. Remaining for several days “clinically dead”, Aristotle Onassis will order doctors to shut down mechanical support on January 22, 1973. From that moment on, there will be no life for Tina Lebanese, as with Aristotle Onassis, who after this tragic event will become the shadow of himself. Almost a year after the loss of her only son, Tina Lebanese suddenly left her last breath, at the age of 45, in Paris, in the room of a luxurious hotel, on October 10, 1974. On March 15, 1975, Aristotle Onassis also dies. The brilliant life of the Greek woman “Grace Kelly”, as many called it, was short and tragic.