Tina Onassis Niarchos
Athina Mary "Tina" Onassis Niarchos was an English-born Greek-French socialite and shipping heiress, the second daughter of the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Livanos and Arietta Zafirakis. She was known best as the first wife of Aristotle Onassis, but she later married her older sister Eugenia's widower and Greek shipping tycoon, Stavros Niarchos, who was her first husband Onassis's arch-rival. She was also the elder sister of George Stavros Livanos.
Marriages and family
She was married three times. Her husbands were:- Aristotle Onassis ; with him she had two children, Alexander Onassis and Christina Onassis. She divorced him upon her discovering that he was having an affair with the opera singer Maria Callas.
- John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, later 11th Duke of Marlborough.
- Stavros Niarchos, her sister Eugenia's widower.
Her son with Onassis, Alexander Onassis, died at the age of 24 on 23 January 1973, as a result of injuries sustained a day earlier during an airplane crash in Athens.
Athina Niarchos died on 10 October 1974 in the Hôtel de Chanaleilles, the Parisian mansion that she shared with her husband. Her death was officially ruled by pathologists as having resulted from an acute edema of the lung, but has also been attributed to her suffering a drug overdose. She was buried next to her sister at the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Her daughter, Christina Onassis, sued Stavros Niarchos, her mother's widower, for her mother's estimated US$250 million estate, claiming the marriage should be annulled by Greek law. Christina later withdrew the lawsuit and Niarchos returned all of his wife's money as well as her jewelry, artwork and other personal effects to Christina.
Her only living descendant is her namesake granddaughter, Athina Onassis, Christina's daughter.