Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  Soon after that, O.J. brought his young, blond, and beautiful girlfriend over to the house where I was living with Robert. O.J. had built her up as the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, so I was excited to meet her and see what all this infatuation was about. When Nicole finally came over, she seemed extremely shy and quiet. But O.J. was right: her beauty took my breath away. She was tall, tanned, fit, and gorgeous, the ultimate California girl.

  I fell in love with Nicole Brown immediately. We were destined to become best friends.

  Robert and I were married on July 8, 1978. It was a fairy-tale wedding from start to finish. Joyce Kraines threw me a bridal shower at Hotel Bel-Air. We were married at the Westwood United Methodist Church on Wilshire Boulevard, and no expense was spared. We had over three hundred guests, and the former florist to the Nixon White House did the flowers. We hosted our reception at the Bel-Air Country Club, and all of our friends were there. It was an elegant, beautiful affair, a storybook romance consummated at the altar. Kenn Gulliksen, our pastor from the Bible studies at Pat Boone’s house, officiated the wedding.

  Tommy was Robert’s best man, O.J. was a groomsman, and A. C. Cowlings was the ring bearer. I can still see him walking down the aisle, the big, burly professional football player carrying a huge, gorgeous white satin pillow my grandmother had made for the ring. He was such a big guy that everyone laughed. My best friend, Joyce Kraines, was my bridesmaid, nine months pregnant. My sister, Karen, was my maid of honor.

  On our wedding night, Robert and I stayed at Hotel Bel-Air. In bed together, he told me things nobody had ever said to me before.

  “You are my dream come true,” he said. “I’ll never forget seeing you at the racetrack on the day we met. I knew then that you were going to be my wife, my future, my love.”

  For our honeymoon, I had put in for miles, and Robert and I got two free tickets to Paris on American Airlines. We flew to France, where we rented a car and drove all through Paris and then down to the South of France, where we spent a night on the beach in Deauville.

  That night was magical. I had never been to Paris before. We just took it slow and enjoyed each day and each other to the fullest. We spent lots of time sightseeing together and exploring all the little places we went. We were able to just get to know each other even better and relax.

  He made everything magical for me. He told me that he couldn’t wait for us to begin our life together. He wanted to take care of me, to create for me the best, sweetest life possible.

  Everyone loved Robert. He had a great sense of humor, an incredible work ethic, and a ton of grateful clients and loyal friends. He was honest and funny and a wonderful husband and family man. He would have done anything for me. He was all about class and elegance and hard work. He loved the nice things in life, yet he had the simplest heart and was so generous in spirit. If somebody needed help, he gave it. I always thought I would grow up and get married and have six kids, but I never knew I would get more than a girl could ever dream of in Robert Kardashian.

  He was so happy that I was his wife. But he didn’t want me to be spoiled. He wanted me to appreciate the things we had. He wanted me to learn and grow slowly into my role as his wife and the life of privilege and success that we enjoyed together. Within limits.

  “I can give you a lot of material things,” he said. “But I’m not going to give them to you all at once, because too much, too soon is not a good thing, either.”

  Still, he would do things like wrap a Barbie doll up for my Christmas present, and when I unwrapped the doll, I would gasp when I saw she had a diamond wristwatch around her waist. Or he would put onyx-and-diamond earrings under my pillow for my birthday. There wasn’t one thing that I wanted that Robert didn’t eventually give me. He was the most thoughtful, generous, amazing guy I had ever met. He was my prince.

  The greatest gift he gave me was a child.

  While we were honeymooning in Europe, Robert’s first cousin Cynthia Shahian, whom everyone calls “Cici,” stayed at our house, watched our dogs, and answered the phone. Many of the calls were from American Airlines.

  “Where’s Kris?” they would ask. “She’s not checking in. She needs to get back to work.” I had planned to go back to work, but Robert and I were having so much fun spending time together and having the greatest honeymoon in the world, I just knew I wouldn’t. As much fun as I had working for American, and as grateful as I was for my fabulous job, my life had changed.

  One day, Cici called me in Europe. “Kris! American is looking for you to come back to work,” she said. “What should I tell them?”

  I turned to Robert. “Tell them you’re retiring,” he said.

  “Tell them I’m retiring,” I told Cici.

  Cici, of course, handled the call to American Airlines. Cici, I would soon discover, could handle anything. From the moment we met, Cici and I became fast friends and cohorts in crime. It’s funny how life gives you anchors along the way. Cici was such a gift to me, and soon became a powerful thread that would run through every stage of my life. She has the most amazing, remarkable personality, and is always the life of the party while being the wisest voice of reason in any situation. Cici was the one I would soon always turn to for anything and everything.

  It was good that I retired from the airline on my honeymoon, because two weeks later I discovered I was pregnant. Nine months, two weeks, and two days after our wedding, I gave birth to our first baby. It was a girl.

  She was born in the middle of the night, and the next day, as soon as we were transferred to a room, O.J. came to see us. He was so excited for Robert and me, so excited about the birth of our first baby.

  “This is such great news!” he boomed when he walked into the hospital room. Then he added with a wink, because maybe he knew that Robert maybe had hoped it was going to be a boy, “All great, macho guys have girls first.”

  It was so cute and, again, so was O.J. I absolutely loved O.J. He was like a brother to me. It meant so much to have one of Robert’s dearest friends come to the hospital when we had our first child.

  When you are young, you think of silly names, I guess, but I loved the name “Courtney.” I thought it was so pretty, and I wanted it to be really different and amazing and unique, so I named her Kourtney Kardashian with a K. I kept writing it down to make sure I was okay with it, because it looked so strange to me at first. “Kourtney” with a K might have seemed odd, but I knew if I had a girl that had to be the name. If I had a boy, I was going to name him Sarkis, which is an Armenian boy’s name. But I ended up getting Robert a dog for his birthday before we had Kourtney and we named him Sarkis. So it all worked out.

  Robert loved the name Kourtney and absolutely adored the little girl who went with it. He would have been okay with a girl or a boy, though. He was just that kind of guy. He was a really calm, good guy, and, yes, he had his limits and could put his foot down firmly. But not when it came to his daughter. Kourtney had her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

  I was equally smitten. Kourtney brought us both so much joy. There were times when I would carry her around all day long. She was so little and petite and cute and such a good baby; we just couldn’t take our eyes off of her. I couldn’t get over the realization that I could love someone that much. I thought that I was so much in love with Robert, but I didn’t even know what love was until I had Kourtney.

  Kourtney became our entire world. We took her everywhere we went. I remember the first time I left Kourtney with a babysitter. There were some family friends with girls across the street from us, the Masons, and I asked the girls to come over and watch Kourtney one day. I was only going one mile up the street to go to the market, but halfway there, I had to turn around and go back. I couldn’t stand the thought that someone else was watching Kourtney and that maybe they would drop her or something. I was so young, and I was so scared she might break.

  My parents offered to watch Kourtney for us while we went to Hawaii for our first wedding anniversary that y
ear, but even then I couldn’t stand it. I cried myself to sleep the first night, and finally, we had to come home early. I just missed Kourtney too much.

  I was so happy to be able to concentrate full-time on my dream of being a mother and wife. My first nine months of motherhood were spent in the Deep Canyon Drive house. I had a baby nurse for the first ten days, at Robert’s insistence, and it was such a treat. I wasn’t nursing Kourtney, so I was able to sleep at night, which was such a good start. She was on a schedule right away and that worked out really well. After the baby nurse, I didn’t really have any help, but still we did great. We were a happy little family.

  One funny moment in Kourtney’s babyhood happened one afternoon when O.J. was over to play tennis with Robert. O.J. was in his tennis whites, and we were out in front of the house saying hello before they went down to the courts. O.J. picked Kourtney up and lifted her up in the air. “Hi, Kourtney. You’re so cute!” he cooed at her.

  But Kourtney was allergic to her milk, and she was a frequent barfer. She took a breath and exploded, like the little girl in The Exorcist, hurling barf all over O.J., literally covering him and his tennis whites in baby vomit.

  “Oh my God, Robert, take your baby!” O.J. screamed.

  He had to come inside and take all his clothes off, because he reeked! We found a pair of shorts for him, which were huge, and a T-shirt that didn’t fit. He eventually just went home, shaking his head.

  When Kourtney was about nine months old, we bought a house on Tower Lane in Beverly Hills. O.J. and Nicole rented our Deep Canyon Drive house when we moved. They were much more serious now than they had been before and they wanted to live together. O.J.’s wife, Marguerite, remained in the big house on Rockingham Drive in Brentwood.

  Tower Lane, as we called it, became the touchstone for the Kardashians. It was a big, two-story Cape Cod–style house, around seven thousand square feet. It had these levels in the back that led down to a pool house and a tennis court. We had a big grill out back and everyone came over on Sundays for barbecues and tennis.

  That house on Tower Lane was where my adult life really began. The foggy time before, when we lived on Deep Canyon, where I was a newlywed and a new mother for about five minutes, were behind us. On Tower Lane, I really came up for air and found my sea legs as a wife and mother. I quickly lost the fifty pounds I had gained in my pregnancy with Kourtney and I felt good about myself again. I just had such joy and excitement for life then. Life on Tower Lane was nothing short of idyllic.

  We decided to go ahead and have another baby because we were having so much fun. From the day we met, Robert and I talked about how we wanted to have a big family, so we never expected to have anything less. We couldn’t wait to have another baby. My pregnancy was so easy the first time, and we were beyond happy with Kourtney. So I just couldn’t wait to do it all again. Giving birth had been the most powerful and amazing experience I had ever had. All I talked about for months after having Kourtney was the whole birthing experience. I would sit and talk about it to anyone who would listen. The thought of doing it again and again just thrilled me—and the site of our next conception was perfect for the baby that would result from it: the glamorous ski town of Aspen, Colorado.

  It was the winter of 1980, and O.J. had just retired from professional football. He was finally able to go skiing. Under his football contracts, he was never allowed to do certain things like ski, so he wanted to learn how to ski. Robert, O.J., Nicole, and I went on a ski vacation to Aspen.

  We shared an Aspen town house that winter week and had so much fun. Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album had just come out and we had it blasting, shaking the town house walls. We spent our days trying to teach O.J. to ski, which was really funny, and we would go down the mountain and meet for lunch and drink hot toddies.

  We really bonded and I got to know Nicole. At first, I didn’t think she and I would have much in common. I had a new baby and she was younger and single. She and O.J. spent their nights out having fun and Robert and I stayed in, watching TV, and going to bed at nine p.m.

  It turned out that Nicole and I really had fun together. She had really fallen for O.J. by then. The two of them were madly in love and had this obvious chemistry that you could feel when you were in the same room with them. They were constantly kissing and touching—they absolutely could not keep their hands off each other. He was already incredibly possessive of Nicole. Even when she would go to the bathroom, O.J. would wonder out loud when she was going to come back. “O.J., she’ll be back in just a minute. Just relax,” I would laugh.

  We went to the movies that week and we saw a movie called Silent Scream. The tagline was “Terror so sudden there is no time to scream.” Kind of creepy, considering how things turned out. In any case, I hated scary movies, but O.J. and Nicole loved them. I had my hands over my eyes most of the movie, and O.J. and Nicole thought that was so funny. From then on, every time we played charades—and we played a lot over the years—whenever O.J. and Nicole had to act out a movie, they always pretended like they were screaming. It was a private joke for the rest of our relationship.

  In Aspen, O.J. and Nicole would go out after a fun dinner most nights, and Robert and I would go back to our room because we were the old married couple. We made very good use of that time in the condominium by ourselves. Kimberly was definitely born out of a night of passion. Robert and I always had our best sex on vacation, when we could relax and have fun, and the child who would come next was definitely a product of that.

  When I came home from Aspen, it took about a month for me to realize I hadn’t had a period. I bought a pregnancy test, but when I took it, it turned out a little fuzzy. It wasn’t positive right away, but it wasn’t negative, either. I called my doctor, Paul Crane, and asked if I could come in and take a urine test. Within minutes, Dr. Crane said, “Kris, you’re pregnant.” I was beyond thrilled.

  When I had found out I was pregnant with Kourtney, I had gone to Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and bought a fuzzy little lamb with a music box inside, and I wrapped it up and took it to Robert’s office. “What are you doing here in the middle of the day?” he asked. “I just came by to say hi and to give you a little present,” I said. So when I found out I was pregnant again, I ran to Saks and bought a little bunny with a music box in it. I had it wrapped up and I headed to Robert’s office.

  When I showed up at his office in the middle of the day and said, “I have a little present for you,” Robert looked stunned. “No,” he said, unwrapping the bunny. He was so excited. I ran up to him and gave him a big hug. “We’re going to have another baby!” I cried. “Oh my God, we have to celebrate!” he said. Every time I found out I was pregnant, I told him the same way.

  The pregnancy was an absolute joy. I was spending all my days with Kourtney, who was of course still an infant. On October 21, 1980, our second daughter was born. Naming her was easy, because I had a girlfriend named Kimberly, and she was so beautiful. I loved how “Kourtney” and “Kimberly” sounded together. And, of course, I loved the letter K.

  From the moment she was born, Kimberly Kardashian was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. In the first weeks that she was home from the hospital, I remember walking downstairs to find Robert and Kimberly, who was lying in her bassinet. Robert had her dressed in Baby Dior with a pink satin bonnet. I looked at her face and thought, She is so beautiful! She was just stunning from the beginning and had the most adorable personality—curious, sunny, playful, adorable—and she was a gift from heaven for Kourtney, who thought Kimberly was born solely as a friend for her. It was love at first sight between Kourtney and Kimberly—just as it was love at first sight with Kimberly for all of us.

  Now I was twenty-four and had two babies, and I had no idea it would be so hard. Everyone told me that life would change with a second baby. Let me tell you: change it did! I tell new moms now that one is like one, but two is like twenty. I was overwhelmed, but life went on. My mom and dad came up to visit as much as possib
le, and Robert’s parents, Helen and Arthur, and his extended family were a huge part of our lives.

  The definition of happiness for me is spending time with family, and we did so much of it back then. Robert’s aunt Dorothy and her husband, Jack—who we always called Auntie Dorothy and Uncle Jack—would come and take Kimberly and Kourtney to Douglas Park in Santa Monica while everyone else made dinner. Robert’s cousin Cici, who was by now one of my closest friends and confidantes, was always the first one in the kitchen. We had this huge Armenian family, and everyone helped with the cooking and the kids. Those years were fabulous.

  From 1980 to 1983, I was all about being the perfect wife and mother: raising babies, forming traditions, and settling into my life’s dream. I found so much joy in creating routines—especially holidays and special occasions—and keeping my house the way I loved it. I loved potting plants. I loved creating the schedules. I loved everything about the life I had with Robert and our two children.

  Every morning, after Robert went to work, I would have the whole house to myself. We had amazing people working for us, and I would make sure the house was picture-perfect. I made breakfast for the babies, I played tennis with my friends, I met friends for lunch. I went shopping for the most adorable clothes for our two girls, who were always perfectly groomed, with big bows in their hair. Then I would come home and play with the babies some more.

  I obsessively cleaned my house, straightened the drawers, swept the floors, and threw loads and loads of laundry in the washing machine, even though I had a housekeeper. If I walked past a table and it was dirty or dusty, I had to grab a bottle of Windex or Pledge and make it shine. It gave me great satisfaction just to clean out the refrigerator. If you opened my refrigerator door, everything was pristine and perfect inside. (Funny enough, all my kids today do the same thing. The inside of Kimberly’s refrigerator looks exactly like mine did thirty years ago, everything perfectly clean and organized.)