Dixon is best known for allegedly predicting the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. In the May 13, 1956, issue of Parade magazine she wrote that the 1960 presidential election would be won by a Democrat who would “be assassinated or die in office.” It is not generally remembered that she also said the death would “not necessarily [be] in his first term.” She later admitted, “During the 1960 election, I saw Richard Nixon as the winner.”
Dixon gained public awareness through the biographical volume, A Gift of Prophecy: the Phenomenal Jeane Dixon, written by syndicated columnist Ruth Montgomery. Published in 1965, the book sold more than 3 million copies. A devout Roman Catholic, she attributed her prophetic ability to God.
She was one of several astrologers who gave advice to Nancy Reagan during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Dixon was so well-known that John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined what he called the "Jeane Dixon effect," in which people loudly tout a few correct predictions and overlook false predictions. Many of Dixon's forecasts proved fales, such as her prediction that World War III would begin in 1958 over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, that labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president in 1964 and that the Soviets would land the first man on the moon.