Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of U.S. president John F. Kennedy, was interviewed by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger in early 1964, less than one year after Kennedy's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963. One of the significant events that she discussed in the interview was her recollections during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The crisis occurred when the governments of Cuba and the Soviet Union built nuclear missile bases in Cuba capable of striking major U.S. cities. The threat of nuclear war was real.

Janny Scott writes in the New York Times:

When [Jacqueline Kennedy] learned that the Soviets were installing missiles in Cuba aimed at American cities, she begged her husband not to send her away. "If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you," she says she told him in October 1962. "I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do, too—than live without you."