Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (2 page)

The curator of the Louvre whispered in my ear, “We do not allow pictures with the
Mona Lisa
except on special occasions.” Then she gave us the okay to take a picture or two. So Kim and I stood to the side of the velvet rope as a large crowd gathered, whispering our names and waving to us wildly. We took pictures alongside the famous painting, as everyone else began taking pictures of us.
Incredible!

When we left through the same side door we had entered, a crazy, chaotic crowd had gathered. It wasn’t until we were ushered away from the
Mona Lisa
that I realized I was numb, floating.

As I walked toward the car, my mind wandered back to 1978 when I stood in the exact same place in the exact same city on the
other
side of the same velvet rope, holding hands with my husband, Robert Kardashian. We were on our honeymoon and I was a twenty-two-year-old American Airlines flight attendant. I thought,
Who could have imagined that I would be back thirty-something years later, and this would be my life?
I had come full circle. Now, the road I had traveled was nothing I had ever expected or planned.

I know: the
Mona Lisa
will be here long after the Kardashians are gone. As I always tell my kids, “You’re going to meet the same people on the way down as you did on the way up. So be grateful and humble for the blessings that have been given to you.” Still, I had to admit that trip to the Louvre was one of the headiest experiences of my life.

I kept thinking:
This is where I’m supposed to be.

I am a wife and a mother (believe it or not, I always dreamed of having six kids). I’m not only living that dream, I’m lucky enough to be living it on a huge stage. I’ve been blessed.

I made it through adversity, through personal storms, tremendous personal loss, a devastating divorce, and seemingly insurmountable tragedy, and managed to pick myself up and find love and happiness without ever losing my true self or my motivation to do something with my life and become the best person that I could be.

My mother told me I could do anything I set my mind to, and she taught me to set the bar high. She taught me to dream big and showed me through her strength and perseverance. My grandmother always said: “Do your best!” no matter how big or how small the job. And, of course, my lifelong motto is: “If someone says no, you’re talking to the wrong person.” Yet I would live two
distinctly different lives—the first derailed by turmoil, tragedy, and wasted opportunities, the second as a wife and mother who not only reclaimed her power and lifelong love of family but went on to build the unlikely empire called the Kardashians.

Coming from humble yet wonderful beginnings in Southern California, I was lucky to meet a man who should have been the love of my life, a young and successful lawyer named Robert Kardashian. He transported me into a Beverly Hills dream life and helped me foster a close relationship with God. Then I threw it all away for a crazy love (or lust) affair that left me flattened. I lost my husband, my friends, my home, and nearly my mind, only to reassemble my life and my family with my second husband, the Olympic champion Bruce Jenner.

Shortly after Bruce and I were married, tragedy struck again: My dear friend Nicole Brown Simpson was found stabbed to death on the front steps of her home, and O.J. Simpson—another close friend whom I had known since Robert Kardashian and I were married and with whom I would be reunited during my marriage to Bruce Jenner—went on trial for her murder.

Through the grace of God, I landed on my feet with a second life, a second chance. Standing before the
Mona Lisa
in the Louvre, I could reflect on it all and what we had accomplished: turning the life and times of a Southern California family into a business, an international brand, that connects with millions of people around the world through our laughter, craziness, and, most important, our love for one another.

Yet, like the famous lady in the frame, to many we remain a mystery.

How did we get here? What is the mystique, the magic, the story behind the smiles? Who am I to manage my family as a business and produce a hit television series, which has spawned, as of
this writing, three hit spin-off series, all supported by a seemingly endless stream of endorsements, modeling contracts, clothing and fragrance lines, magazine covers, and TV appearances?

It has taken me half a lifetime to live the story in these pages, one that I hope will show people you can follow your dreams—no matter how big—and still become whatever it is you set your mind to through hard work and perseverance, no matter your age or circumstances. And, as with any story worth telling, I have to start at the beginning . . .

Kris Jenner
. . . and All Things
Kardashian

CHAPTER ONE

The Candelabra

I
remember the candles. Thousands of them. Green and blue and silver and gold. Candles in all sizes and shapes—angels, pillars, balls, and flowers—made of beeswax and paraffin, all so beautiful and smelling divine.

Most of all, I remember the Gloomchasers: crushed colored glass glued onto a jar, grouted in gold, then polished and placed on teak stands with glass votive candles inside. When the votives were lit, the candles would glow and the colors would glisten, and supposedly any gloom in the room would be immediately chased away. The Gloomchasers were gorgeous, and we could not make them fast enough or keep them in stock.

We were the candle family of La Jolla, California. In 1963, my grandparents Lou and Jim Fairbanks along with my mom, Mary Jo, opened one of the first candle stores in California. My grandfather Jim would come home after working all day at San Diego Glass and Paint and help my grandmother Lou Ethel make the Gloomchasers
in their garage. At their candle store, the Candelabra, my grandmother had a room as big as a walk-in closet exclusively for Gloomchasers, all of them lit, all of them magical.

The candles are my most vivid memory of my perfect childhood in the perfect world we had in Southern California, before it all began to fall apart . . .

M
y father, Robert Houghton, was an engineer for Convair, an aircraft design and manufacturing company. He and my mom had me on November 5, 1955, and my sister, Karen, three years later. We lived in Point Loma, a really tony area of San Diego, in a big, beautiful white house like you see in the movies.

Karen and I were extremely close in the fabulous
Gidget
dream of an early childhood that we shared. We looked very different. She had light brown hair, and I had jet-black hair—and she was smaller than I was. There’s a definite family resemblance, though. It’s obvious that we come from the same parents. We also had different personalities. Even though we grew up under the same circumstances and in the same environment, we just approached goals and situations differently, even in childhood. With my big, chatty personality, I’m sure I entertained my quieter sister. We loved each other, and we were there for each other through thick and thin, and to this day we are part of each other’s lives.

When I was seven, our parents had an argument, and soon they were arguing all of the time. Finally, in 1962, my father packed his bags. He was “going away,” our parents told us, but he would be back. That’s how you did it in those days. There wasn’t a therapeutic plan for how to tell a seven-year-old and her four-year-old sister that life as they knew it was over. Soon we realized that our parents were getting divorced and our father was never coming back. We had a great relationship with him until Convair moved to Long
Beach in the mid-seventies, and took my father with it. We saw him rarely after that.

The divorce was tough for me and had lasting effects. It was very, very hard for me to wrap my head around my parents not living together anymore. My dad would come visit us at our house in Point Loma, the one that we used to all live in together. That was really hard, because we were young. He would come to visit us and then leave again. That was really weird for me. I wondered,
Why is he leaving? Is he going to stay? Is this going to work out?
When you are a child and your parents separate, you’re always hoping that they are going to get back together.

My mother was such a pillar of strength through that time. I didn’t realize it then, but watching her remain that strong and upbeat through such a personal storm was very influential on me. She wasn’t going to let that divorce get her down. We moved from Point Loma to Clairemont, where my grandparents lived. My mom bought this amazing 1956 T-Bird convertible. She used to throw us in the back of the car and drive us to the beach in La Jolla. In those days you didn’t have to wear seat belts, and we’d sit in the tiny area in the back of the car with the picnic lunch she had packed. Her girlfriends would meet us at the beach, and we’d eat our picnic lunch. She did so many fun things on the weekends with us, and it was clear we were going to persevere. The three of us were going to be just fine.

My mother raised us with rules. She wasn’t going to let us run amok. There were rules and regulations: we had to make our beds, and we had to wash our sink out when we brushed our teeth like my grandmother taught us, and we had to help her vacuum, and we had to clean the house a couple of days a week. We had to take care of our own rooms and belongings. She taught us to be responsible for ourselves, and that that was the way to overcome adversity. She taught us to just pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on
with a smile. We were going to have fun, and things were going to be great. They might not be perfect, and we might not have a dad, but life was still fabulous.

Just after my parents’ divorce in 1963, I was walking home from school in second grade, passing the huge mansion with the circular driveway near our house in Point Loma, as I did every day. For some reason I hit the inside of my left shin on a retaining wall. It hurt all night long. When I woke up the next morning, I had a bump on my leg the size of a large lemon. The doctor said we needed to do some X-rays, and when the results came back, it showed I had a bone tumor. My parents had to sign a piece of paper before I went into surgery, stating that if the doctors found cancer in my bones, they had approval to amputate my leg at the hip, or wherever the doctor determined the cancer began.

Mom and Dad didn’t think I could hear them talking about this, but I could. So all I could think about when I went into this surgery was the doctors amputating my leg at the hip. I was scared to death. But I came out of the surgery, with my mom and my grandmother in the waiting room, and I still had my leg.

That was when I realized how loving my family was and how appreciative I was to have them help me get through something so traumatic. It was also the first time my dad had come back since the divorce. He came to the hospital and brought me a transistor radio in a black case. I have it to this day. The end of the divorce had been rough, so he had stayed away for a while, and his visit meant a lot to me. My mom gave me a stuffed monkey named Anabelle, and that monkey has lived in every closet in every home I’ve had since.

From the moment my parents divorced, my mom worked full-time. She loved to work, and we learned from her that work was a positive thing. She had to sell our beautiful house in Point Loma, but my grandmother helped her get a house on Deer Park Drive in
Clairemont, just three blocks away from Longfellow Elementary. I walked to school and was a Brownie. My grandfather Jim came over and built my sister and me a real playhouse. I’ll never forget how amazing that playhouse was, right in front of our house. We were really happy. Every day after school, my mother would give us a dollar each, and Karen and I would walk up to the little strip mall at the other end of the street and buy candy as an after-school treat.

My mom worked in many places after my parents’ divorce, but the job I most remember was in a pro shop at a golf course. My mom is and always has been so beautiful: she’s tall, and she has such a beautiful figure. And she’s always dressed to the nines. When I was a little girl, my mom dressed like all women did in the ’50s with the fashion and the drama—the hats and the gloves, everything. My mom didn’t have a lot of money in those days, but somehow she always figured out a way to look really fashionable. She went to work every day dressed like Jacqueline Kennedy. She was the mom doing the housework and making dinner, but at the same time, she was wearing these gorgeous dresses cinched at the waist. She always looked like she had on some fabulous Chanel ensemble. And her hair was perfect. She was so beautiful, and I adored and admired her.

But it was my grandmother who was most instrumental in my upbringing. My grandmother was my hero. She was born in Hope, Arkansas, and her first husband, my biological grandfather, cheated on her. So she packed up my mother and had the gumption to leave. She was very strong-willed and stubborn. She decided she didn’t need a man, and she moved with her daughter to San Diego. She was so confident, so smart, and she had a strong sense of self. She met my grandfather Jim while working as an accountant on a naval base in San Diego. She wasn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and get to work.

She and my grandfather lived in an upper-middle-class neighborhood
with an avocado tree and a birdbath in the backyard. Since my mom was busy with work, Grandma and I really bonded. After my father moved, my grandfather became the male figure in my life. He was pure working-class Middle America. Every day he put on a uniform—khaki pants, khaki shirt—and went to work for San Diego Glass, driving one of those trucks that carried big panes of glass on their sides.

My grandma bought our school clothes, cooked the greatest dinners, and bathed and groomed her two toy poodles, Bridgette and Toulouse, who were supposed to be my dogs. My mother wouldn’t let me keep them because they were too much work, so my grandmother kept them for me.

My grandmother was gorgeous like my mom, but she had blond hair and green eyes. Until the day she died, my grandmother wore a matching outfit every single day. She always wore beautiful slacks with a matching blazer and the perfect blouse and shoes. My family members, every last one of them, were always fashion-forward, and my grandmother was the matriarch. Fashion and grooming were both very important to her. Even if we were going to Disneyland, she made sure to take us shopping a few days beforehand to buy us new outfits for the outing. My grandmother took us shopping while my mom was at work, and if we had a friend with us, she got a new outfit too. It was always important to my grandmother and my mother that we looked our best.