Joan Kennedy Dead: First Wife of Ted Kennedy and Last Survivor of Camelot Was 89

Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of Sen. Ted Kennedy , died early in the morning on Oct. 8, PEOPLE confirms. She was 89 years old.

GoLocalProv published an obituary announcing the news.

Joan, a talented classical pianist with a master's degree in education, divorced Ted in 1983, but continued to be known as the long-suffering wife of the youngest Kennedy son to whom she was married for 22 years.

Joan was born in New York City on Sept. 2, 1936, and raised in the suburbs by a Roman Catholic family.

She met Ted in 1957, when his older sister Jean Kennedy introduced them. Both Jean and Joan were students at Manhattanville College.

Within the year, the two became engaged. Although both Joan and Ted expressed reservations about getting married, Ted's father, the powerful patriarch