Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  But when the weekend was over, I was still stuck in New York.

  I started lighting candles.

  Whenever I could, I would go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and pray. I would light a candle—yes, a candle—because candles have always been lucky for me. I would light candles in that ancient church and pray to God that I would get transferred to Los Angeles.

  “You’ll never get transferred to Los Angeles,” every flight attendant told me. “You have to have so much seniority. Only ten-year veterans get a sought-after city like L.A.”

  I kept praying, praying, praying, and lighting candle after candle, buckling down for the long, hard winter and coming to the realization about how unhappy I would be if I had to stay in New York, especially through the holidays. Christmas has always been my thing. To this day, I am still like a big kid on Christmas. I get so excited to decorate my house and spend time with my friends and family and have people over and plan my big Christmas Eve. I am famous for my over-the-top Christmas Eves now, complete with Santas and elves and reindeer and carolers. Back then, though, my Christmases were on a smaller scale. I was alone in New York, without family or friends during my very favorite holidays because of . . . this job. Again, I was so young. But I kept lighting candles, praying and believing that something good would happen.

  Lo and behold, one day I got a call from the American Airlines corporate office. “I hope this is good news,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “You applied for a transfer to Los Angeles, and your transfer was granted.”

  I fell to my knees and thanked God. I was bawling, literally crying, over this miracle. I called Robert. I called my parents. I called everybody. “I’m coming back to L.A.! I’m coming back to L.A.!” My mom and Harry flew to New York and helped me move. In those days you could check as much stuff as you wanted on airplanes, so we packed everything, even my TV, and checked it all.

  I got off the plane in L.A., my city, the city of the man I loved—or at least, the man I thought I loved—wearing a pair of cream gabardine wool slacks tucked into brown riding boots and a matching blazer. I had a button-down shirt underneath and I wore a big hat. I collected my luggage and walked outside. Waiting for me at the curb at LAX in his new black Rolls-Royce was my prince, Robert Kardashian. I ran to him, literally flew into his arms. “Oh my God, oh my God! I’m finally here!” I cried.

  We kissed, long, deep, passionately, and I knew—This is the one.

  We piled everything into the Rolls and drove to his house.

  The next morning I immediately started looking for an apartment. It didn’t even occur to me to live with Robert; that just didn’t seem cool. At that time, he was living with both his brother, Tommy, and his best friend O.J. It was a big boys’ club. I called a couple of my flight attendant friends and the three of us found an apartment in Brentwood, close enough to both Robert in Beverly Hills and the Los Angeles International Airport.

  Those were magical times. I would work two or three days a week, LAX to New York. I loved doing L.A.–New York because there were no stops. It was just back and forth, and back to Robert and our lovely life together again. Between the flights, Robert and I would play. Every night, it was someplace fabulous for dinner, which in 1977 meant Trader Vic’s, Daisy, and Luau.

  Luau was the first place Robert ever took me to dinner in Beverly Hills. Joe Stellini was the maître d’, and Robert ordered this entire dinner for us.

  “These are coconut rolls,” Robert told me when a dish of snowy white rolls arrived at our table. I took him at his word, of course, and bit into one. It was a hand towel. Robert told that story for years. He thought it was the funniest thing. He was such a funny guy, and he was always playing practical jokes on everyone. The coconut roll/hand towel bit ranked among his best.

  When I moved to Los Angeles, O.J. had been separated from his wife, Marguerite. They tried to work things out and had gotten back together, and when they did, she got pregnant with their daughter Erin. So now, after living with Robert for a time, O.J. was back at home with Marguerite. Then, one day, Robert’s brother surprised us by announcing that he had bought a house in Beverly Hills right across the street from Sammy Davis Jr.

  Now Robert and I had the house in Beverly Hills to ourselves, and I soon left the apartment I’d been sharing with the flight attendants. It was a relief to have some space alone with Robert, because when I first moved back to L.A., O.J. and Tommy and all of their friends were always there. The guys would play tennis at one another’s houses, because tennis was the big thing back then. On Saturdays everyone would be at Robert’s house playing tennis. On Sundays we would all be at O.J.’s house playing tennis.

  My time living alone with Robert in his big, beautiful house on Deep Canyon Drive would turn out to be short-lived. Robert was a born-again Christian. He prayed before every meal and before each and every business meeting. He even carried a Bible with him. I had grown up going to a Presbyterian church on Sundays and holidays, but I was never really devout, especially not as devout as Robert.

  When I went to see Robert for the first time in L.A., I realized that he was actually not only really fun (and funny) but he was also very spiritual. The first thing I noticed was that he had a Bible on his desk and another next to his bed. It was impressive to me that Robert seemed to be such a religious man. Wow, I thought, what an amazing guy. He wore his Christianity on his sleeve.

  “That’s a beautiful Bible,” I said about the Bible beside the bed. It was covered in a special leather cover, hand tooled with his initials engraved on the front. (I have that Bible to this day.)

  Through the years I would discover that Robert’s family members were all very devoted Christians and often gave one another beautiful gifts that showed their love of God. When I went into Robert’s kitchen, I saw an intricate three-dimensional sculpture made of clay hanging from a rawhide rope in his kitchen. On the pieces of clay were inscriptions from the famous John 3:16 Bible verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

  “It was a gift from my sister, Barbara,” Robert told me.

  The love of the Lord would be the thread that ran deep in our family for many years to come. The artwork bearing the Bible verse in Robert’s kitchen became something that meant a lot to me. Last year, when I was with Robert’s sister, Barbara, I mentioned how much the John 3:16 verse in the clay artwork she had given her brother had meant to me. “Whatever happened to it?” I asked. She told me she didn’t know but would try to find out. Shortly afterward, she drove all the way to L.A. with her daughter, Cheryle, and gave me my own copy for my house. It almost brought me to tears.

  Robert’s love of God and religion was one of the things that attracted me the most. He wanted me to share in that love. One day he told me he wanted to take me to a Bible study at Pat Boone’s house. Pat was, of course, the pop singer turned motivational speaker who hosted these big Bible studies at his house every week, and over the years, celebrities like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Doris Day, Priscilla Presley (thanks to Robert), and Glenn Ford were just some of the people who attended. Robert went every week and he really wanted me to come. Of course, I agreed, and I was glad I did. The minute I walked into Pat Boone’s big, beautiful, sprawling house in Beverly Hills, I met the most welcoming, wonderful, magical group of people I’d ever known in my whole life.

  Pat Boone hosted, but others often led the studies, particularly our pastor, Kenn Gulliksen. Pat couldn’t have been nicer, and his wife, Shirley, was so sweet. I met his daughters, too, and I was especially excited to meet his daughter Debbie, who would become a popular singer just like her dad. We would meet in Pat’s big family room with all his friends and extended family members and talk about faith and Christianity, stories from the Bible, what they meant, and our interpretations. The speakers always gave us something to really think about all week. I had a wonderful time going to the meetings and I really became clos
er to Jesus Christ because of them.

  Robert and I started attending Pat Boone’s Bible study groups regularly. I met a group of friends there that I would keep for years afterward. Robert introduced me to religion in a whole new light. He really taught me the importance of Christianity and how making it more of a focus in my life could make me feel whole. It felt so right to be dating someone who felt the same way I did. I accepted Christ through those Bible studies at Pat Boone’s house, and I became a born-again Christian.

  Soon after that, Robert decided I should move out because it was against God’s plan for us to live together. Not long after that, because of the Bible studies, Robert decided that it wasn’t a good idea for us to even have sex anymore. We were full-on dating, with full-on sex, and all of a sudden, mid-relationship, he decided that we were not going to sleep together anymore, because it was not God’s will. I agreed, since that is what the Bible says. But Robert wanted me to move out altogether. So I found myself sitting there, packing up all my clothes, thinking, What the hell is going on here?

  A. C. Cowlings, one of Robert’s and O.J.’s friends, who would later gain fame for driving O.J.’s Bronco after the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, helped me move. I went from Robert’s big, grand house in Beverly Hills into a tiny little apartment in Sherman Oaks, right behind a Marie Callender’s pie shop. So there I am in my apartment, and one night Robert came to take me out in his spanking-new white Rolls-Royce. By then he had a black Rolls and a white Rolls, and he parked in the garage underneath my apartment to pick me up. He took me out to dinner and then he walked me back upstairs. We would still kiss and make out, but otherwise nothing, because we were living this clean, Christian relationship.

  One night, after we kissed, he left as he always did. But a few minutes later he was knocking on the door. When I opened it, he was shaking, and I could tell he was about to cry.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I banged my new Rolls-Royce into a pillar in your garage,” he said.

  We went downstairs, and there was a huge dent in the back of his car.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  I don’t know why he came back to tell me. I think he was just shaken up. He just needed a hug. But in my head, as I watched him drive off, I thought, Serves him right for kicking me out!

  Restlessness is my nature. And I was restless about my relationship with Robert. This is a guy who asked me to marry him three weeks after we started dating, and now . . . nothing. What’s the problem? I thought. Ask me AGAIN! I waited and I waited.

  Then, in August of 1977, Elvis Presley died. We got the news while we were at dinner at the house of our best friends, Joyce and Larry Kraines. The first thing Robert wanted to do was call Priscilla. He was close to her and Lisa Marie, and he wanted to check on them. He got her on the phone right away and asked her if she was okay.

  Oh, boy, I thought. They’ve reconnected. I never really understood why they broke up, so I didn’t know what this meant. Maybe now Priscilla would have more emotional space? Maybe now Robert would want her back? Over the following months, I was apprehensive that Robert would start thinking about Priscilla again.

  Then, suddenly, it was the holidays, my favorite season. Robert and I had so much fun and spent the holidays with each other’s families. We drove down to San Diego in his white Rolls and had Christmas Eve with my mom and dad, and the next morning we drove back to L.A. to spend Christmas with his family. In January, I went back to work flying and Robert, as always, was working hard in his law practice.

  That winter, we went on a couple of ski trips. I got the ski bug bad, so I decided to plan a girls’ trip to Switzerland in the winter of 1978. Robert decided to go to Rio at the same time I was on my ski trip. He had a lifelong desire to go to Carnival, so he went with a buddy. By the time we both got home, I had sort of had it. I missed Robert so much when I was on my trip. I decided I didn’t want to do girls’ trips anymore. I didn’t want to be by myself anymore. I didn’t want to live in an apartment. I was ready to live out my dream of becoming a wife and a mother with six kids of my own. The calling was so strong that I decided, If Robert doesn’t ask me to marry him, I am just going to have to move on. I didn’t want to, but I thought I might have to. I felt like I was on the slow boat to China with Robert Kardashian.

  Right before I left for my girls’ trip to Switzerland with one of my best girlfriends, Cindy Spallino, a fellow flight attendant, I went to get my nails done on Rodeo Drive for my big trip. I had wedding rings on my brain. On the way to the salon, we walked by Van Cleef & Arpels. In the window was a beautiful, five-rows-deep, pavé diamond wedding band. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a wedding band like that? I thought.

  That ring became my dream. I didn’t tell anybody. I just kept it to myself and thought, Someday when I get married, I would love to have that ring.

  Unbeknownst to me, while I was in Switzerland, Robert went ring shopping with my girlfriend Joyce Kraines. I came home with my arms full of European fashion magazines: European Vogue and others. They were so beautiful and the photography was just stunning. I love to read fashion magazines. I had them on my coffee table, and for some reason some of them ended up at Robert’s house.

  On Easter Sunday, 1978, I spent the night at Robert’s house so that we could get up early and go to church. We made little Easter baskets, which we gave to each other on Easter Sunday morning. We were getting ready to leave. I was in the dining room when Robert came in and took a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and suddenly dropped to one knee.

  “I love you so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said. “I’d like you to be my wife . . . Will you marry me?”

  I started to bawl right there in the dining room. He unfolded the piece of paper, and it was a page out of my European Vogue with a picture of a big gorgeous diamond.

  “I would love for you to have this ring someday,” he said. “But until then, I’m going to find you the perfect thing, and I’ll do it next week.”

  Of course, Robert could have bought me anything he wanted. But he was a frugal guy; in those days, it was one thing to buy a Rolls-Royce; it was quite another to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a diamond.

  Oh my God. He was so sweet and so scared. He was quivering, and I thought he was going to cry. Of course I said: “YES!” We were both crying and laughing.

  We decided to go straight to San Diego to tell my parents. “Mom, we’re coming down to have lunch with you,” I said on the phone.

  We hopped a flight on PSA and my mom picked us up at the airport. We all went out to lunch and Robert and I told my mom, Harry, and my sister, Karen, the big news. Everyone was so happy. We flew home right after lunch and went over to Robert’s parents’ house. We told his mom and dad and they were so happy too. His mom, Helen, even cried, and she was not the crying type. His dad was hugging us and said he wanted to take the whole family for dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel. So we all met up at the Beverly Hills Hotel for dinner—Robert’s mom and dad and Tommy Kardashian and Joan Esposito and his uncle Bobby and aunt Jean—and we had an amazing engagement dinner.

  The next day Robert went ring shopping. When he came home at noon, he was so excited. “I have a surprise for you!” he practically sang. “I found the perfect, perfect ring!”

  He pulled out a bag from—oh my God!—Van Cleef & Arpels, and inside was the exact same ring I had seen in the window that day before my trip to Switzerland!

  “Someday I am going to buy you that big diamond, but for now . . .”

  I gasped. I was literally shaking. “Who told you about this ring?!” I asked. I was in a state of shock. This was my ring.

  “Nobody!” he insisted. “I just saw it and I thought it was amazing.”

  Another amazing coincidence. He had chosen the same ring I had picked out that day I went window-shopping with Cindy Spallino. There have been many moments in my life when things have happened just as I imagined, just as I had dreamed and hope
d they would, and this was one of them. I was floored. I already knew Robert was The One for Me, but the fact that he had walked into that store and come out with the ring that was exactly my vision still amazes me to this day.

  I didn’t wear it until we were married—it was my wedding ring and I never had an engagement ring—and it, like Robert Kardashian, was my dream come true.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Heaven in Beverly Hills

  One day in 1978, before we got married, I went to Robert’s house to find O.J. Simpson sitting at the desk in Robert’s den.

  “You gotta make this call for me, Kris,” he told me. “I’ll dial the number, and when somebody answers, ask if Nicole is there.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked O.J.

  “Because she lives with her parents and they are going to answer.”

  “How old is this girl?”

  He said she was several years younger than me at the time. I was twenty-one, so Nicole must have been eighteen. I called the number. The woman who answered, who I now know well was Nicole’s mother, Judi, asked me, “Who’s calling?”

  “Kris,” I said.

  Then I handed the phone to O.J. That was the beginning. O.J. had gone to the Daisy with his friends, most likely including Robert, where they had met a beautiful young blond waitress who worked there. Her name was Nicole Brown.

  “Hi, baby!” O.J. said after grabbing the phone from me.

  When they hung up, he told me that he and Nicole were full-fledged dating.

  “I really don’t agree with this,” I told him, because he was still married and Nicole was apparently so young. I began to get really angry. But O.J. just said I was young and didn’t understand. He was a smart guy who knew right from wrong, he told me, and it was love at first sight with Nicole. He was so smitten, so taken with her. He couldn’t help himself. He was not going to take no for an answer. O.J. never took no for an answer.