by Jenner, Kris
After New Year’s, we were invited on a celebrity ski trip with Candace and Steve Garvey. All of our kids—four on each side—went along, and it was a true test of our relationship. It’s a big deal to take eight kids skiing, especially when half of them aren’t even ten yet. From the moment we arrived at the airport, I realized this was going to be a blast, because the kids had so much fun and Bruce was so great with them. He took everybody under his wing, teaching all of them—even Rob, then only three—how to ski. I just knew that this guy was a great dad.
I also knew I was falling in love with him. I had only known him a few months, but I was in love with him. It was magnetic. Physically, sexually, emotionally. He was the best friend, best lover, best dad, best pal. Bruce was everything to me and we started doing everything together. If I went shopping or went to get my nails done, Bruce would go with me. All of a sudden I had a shadow. It was fun. I never wanted to be apart from Bruce. We just loved each other.
I had been lacking the self-esteem to just really be myself, in my own skin, in my own home. Bruce had been lacking his own version of the same thing. It was as if we were meant to meet exactly when we did. I just felt really free with Bruce. I felt like he gave me new breath. I felt like I was safe again. I felt like I was where I belonged.
Everything in my life has been God’s plan. I really do believe that. My faith is strong, and it always remained strong through my entire life. Through all these ups and downs and horrible things, I always kept a strong connection to God. I would pray about the things that were going on in my life, as wrong or as right as they were. I can’t tell you how many times I prayed for forgiveness for the whole Ryan thing. I regretted that so much, and I will always love Robert Kardashian, but I knew I had met Bruce for a reason. We had that same sense of adventure and the same sense of what we wanted out of life. Like me, Bruce had been through some emotionally draining relationships. He had been through a couple of divorces. So he had some experience in that department, and he obviously knew I was going through a divorce, and I was struggling. He was very patient with me and really understood that I was having a hard time ending my relationship with Robert. Still, our relationship moved very, very fast. He would bring his own kids over, and his kids and my kids all got along, and everything was so good.
I don’t know if I deserved it, but I do know that God is a loving and compassionate God, and that he is a forgiving God. And God answered my prayers by sending me Bruce Jenner.
Then something horrible happened: Ryan resurfaced.
There were pictures of Bruce and me in some of the weekly magazines, just reporting that we were dating. One night when, thankfully, Bruce was not spending the night at my house, who came ringing my bell? Ryan. On a wild and drunken binge, screaming at the top of his lungs outside of the house. I wouldn’t let him in, so he climbed over my wall and started banging on my door. My kids were asleep, so I let him in before he woke them up.
“Bruce Jenner!” he screamed. “Fucking Bruce Jenner???! This is horrible. I want you back!”
“No, no, no,” I said. “You have to go home, Ryan. You have to sober up and calm down.”
I calmed him down and sent him home. He called me a few times after that when Bruce was in the car with me. Nothing ever threatened Bruce, but he quickly had enough of the calls.
“Let me talk to that asshole,” he demanded, grabbing the phone.
“You’re dating my girl,” Ryan told him.
I thought, Now you are going to fight for me, dude? After cheating on me?!
Bruce grabbed the phone. “This is Bruce Jenner,” he said in a calm, even, controlled tone. “I’m going out with Kris. I would appreciate it if you would never dial this number again. You got that? Good.” And he hung up.
That was the end of it. Finally, I was able to close the door forever on Ryan. When Bruce did that, it gave me the power to move forward in peace.
After a couple of weeks of our relationship moving fast and furiously, Bruce said, “I would like to go to dinner with Robert. How do you feel about that?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “What are you going to talk about?”
“I think that if you and I are going to end up together, I want him to know that I can certainly take care of you,” he said. “We don’t need his money, and you are fighting over things that shouldn’t be fought over. Why don’t we just start over?”
I was so raw that year, and it sounded like a good idea. My joke with Robert had always been that I came into the marriage with only one thing to my name—an antique desk—and that I would leave the marriage with only the desk. We would laugh about it, like, Oh my God, if I ever leave, I’ll take my desk and run, you know? Now it was about to really happen.
“You know what? I came into that marriage with nothing, I’ll leave with nothing,” I told Bruce.
Lo and behold, Bruce calls Robert and says, “Let’s go to dinner.” They went to dinner at Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard.
“I’m in love with Kris and I’d like to marry her,” Bruce told him. “We’d like your blessing.”
Bruce had not asked me to marry him yet, by the way.
“We don’t want to be in this nightmare of a divorce with you anymore, so let’s just call it off,” Bruce continued. “You take your house. We don’t want your money. Pay your child support, because that’s fair, and let’s call it a day.”
Of course, Robert said, “Okay.”
So the two of them, in one short dinner, worked out my whole divorce. The next day I called up Dennis Wasser and I said, “It’s all worked out. We’re going to give Robert the house—” He stopped me mid-sentence. “But you would’ve gotten your house!” he said.
“You know what? I’m done,” I said. “It’s emotionally too stressful for me. I’m about to lose my mind.”
The meetings with the attorneys, going to court, the incredible stress, along with my own sense of guilt over what I had done to Robert—it was all just too much for me to handle. I was the one who messed up the marriage. I felt like I should be the one to end it peacefully. It was the right thing to do. That Bruce was offering to take care of me and my whole family helped me in my decision, of course.
Bruce Jenner was not exactly rolling in dough. He was no Rockefeller. Bruce was renting a modest little house in Malibu at that time—barely better than the bachelor apartment where I had had my affair in Ryanville—which we determined was unacceptable for the six of us. I was obviously going to have to leave the house on Tower Lane. But we were able to negotiate a deal with Robert to let us stay in Tower Lane for six months before Robert would take it over. In the meantime, I was able to get organized.
One night Bruce had to give a speech to the Boy Scouts of America at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. I remember looking up at him as he gave his motivational speech. Each time he gave it, it brought me to tears. He had so much to offer as a human being, friend, and lover. I was really so in awe of him and attracted to him, and I thought, This could really work. After he was finished speaking, Bruce grabbed my hand and we walked across the room to the meet and greet. He introduced me to somebody saying, “This is my girlfriend, Kris Kardashian.” As we walked away, he said, “We’ve got to do something about changing that last name.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
“‘Jenner’ sounds good,” he said.
That’s when I knew: we were going to be together forever. I had already put my kids through this horrendous divorce. Whoever was going to come into my life to fill that role would have to be a very special guy, and I just knew: Bruce Jenner was it. Bruce loved them—and me—from the start.
Bruce and I decided to move to a house in Malibu, which was a nice transition for me at the time. It got me out of Beverly Hills, where I was uncomfortable anyway, with all my girlfriends still seemingly mad at me and where I was still ashamed of what I’d done. I was so happy to start a new life with Bruce, and I needed a fresh start. It felt good and clean to move
to Malibu.
We leased a beautiful house right on Malibu Road and the Pacific Coast Highway. We signed the papers. I remember being quiet that afternoon on the way home as the enormity of the new life I was launching for me and my kids began to sink in. Bruce and I had dinner plans at Saddle Peak Lodge in the Santa Monica Mountains, right off Canyon Road in Malibu, with Candace and Steve and our girlfriend Mary Frann. We were driving back to Tower Lane to change clothes.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Bruce said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m taking my kids on this journey with me and it scares me a little bit. We’ve leased this house together. We’re not married, I’ve got four kids. It’s a little bit weird. I love you, but this feels a little crazy. I’ve got a big responsibility to my kids.”
That night, February 10, 1991, at dinner at the Saddle Peak Lodge high up in the hills of the Malibu Canyon, Bruce ordered a bottle of champagne while waiting for our friends to arrive. I thought that was a little strange, since Bruce always drank beer. After the champagne was poured, Bruce suddenly got down on one knee in the middle of the Saddle Peak Lodge. Everyone was watching us; I could feel the weight of a hundred stares.
Bruce looked at me as if I were the only one in the room, even though he must have known everyone was staring at us too. “Kris, will you marry me?”
“Are you serious?!” I said.
“Yes, of course I am serious. I have already told your ex-husband I am going to marry you. I want to marry you. Let’s get married. Let’s just do it. Why not? What are we waiting for?”
“Oh my God,” I said, and I started to cry. “This is crazy. Yes, okay, yes.”
All of a sudden, we were engaged.
Now we had the job of telling everybody we were going to get married, and it was really exciting. I remember our friends got to the table—Steve and Candace and Mary—and we shouted, “We’re engaged!” And they were like, “Oh my God!”
We went home that night and told the kids. Bruce’s four kids were having a sleepover with my four kids, and we walked into the living room and there were eight kids there waiting for us. We told them the news, and they were all happy—even Kourtney—and jumped up and down, yelling and screaming, hugging one another.
We started to tell my parents and his family, and our friends, and except for a few people who were really Robert’s closest friends (and those still unhappy with me), everybody was really, really excited. I was on top of the world. The commitment alone felt good. It was so crazy how things fell into place in such a short amount of time. I was still so young, and I had four small children, and this was crazy and perfect all at the time same.
The next day, Bruce had to play in a golf tournament in Los Angeles. He did a lot of the celebrity tournaments. It was so much fun to be there and to tell everybody, including the reporters at the tournament. The press got excited, and it was a really fun day. That afternoon we flew up to Bruce’s house in Lake Tahoe in his small private plane, which Bruce piloted himself. I was in the copilot’s seat, and I had the headset on. I still felt horrible for what I had done to Robert, but happy that I was able to make peace with him on some level. All I really cared about anymore was that Robert thought I was a good mom. After all, I was still the mother of his children. I had told him a million times how sorry I was for what I’d done, and in my prayers I apologized to God and to my family. Now I had done all I could do. Now I had to start my life over.
Up in the air, I looked out the window at the clouds and I remember thinking, Thank you, God. Thank you for taking me through that storm of craziness and having me come out the other side as a whole, happy girl without too much damage.
Bruce and I were engaged five months after we met. Our wedding came two months after that. So from “Hello” to “I do” was exactly seven months. Quick, yes, but as Bruce told me on the night of our engagement, what were we waiting for?
Our dear friends Terry Semel, then chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., and Jane, his wife, hosted our wedding in the backyard of their Bel Air home on April 21, 1991. We had the most amazing ceremony. Both of our families were there and it was the most glorious setting. Jane had gorgeous white tables out on her veranda with beautiful white flowers and a white berry cake from Sweet Lady Jane.
Everybody was thrilled, especially our kids. All eight of them lined up and performed this little skit, which they had written themselves, and I couldn’t believe they all got along so well and could pull that off without a single one of them getting shy. Even my little boy, Rob, was really good in it, and he was now four. They were all so cute and sweet. The girls had on white dresses and party shoes, and the boys had suits.
Everybody we loved was there. It was the perfect day. All that had happened in the preceding years had really stressed out my mom and my stepdad and my grandmother. They were such a huge part of my life, and I’m sure they, like everyone else, thought I had gone more than a little crazy. It’s hard to tell your adult daughter what to do. (Believe me, I know that now.) And I can only imagine the pain that they were all in after I basically torpedoed my marriage and my family in the process. I think my parents were so happy that I was able to put it all back together and that my kids felt good again.
After the wedding, Kourtney had a really hard time with Bruce for the first five years or so. She didn’t want anybody to take the place of her father. She felt this anger toward Bruce and was a little confused. She even dressed in black during those days whenever Bruce was around. But once she realized that Bruce wasn’t going anywhere and that he really did love her and all of us, Kourtney came around. Bruce is smart: he didn’t come in as this authoritative-crazy dad figure. He just came in and showed them that he would be there because he loved me. Bruce’s idea of raising kids is like a day at summer camp. He took the time to play with each of my kids and teach them things, especially sports—tennis, golf, water and snow skiing—and sometimes help them in school. Like the time he suggested that Kim do her school research project on him.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Let me tell you,” said Bruce. Kim wrote her paper on Bruce. Of course her female teachers had a crush on Bruce, and of course Kim got an A.
Eventually my kids came to love Bruce as much as I did. Rob was so young, he didn’t know the difference. Khloé was young as well when Bruce and I were married. As for Bruce’s kids, their dad had been single for ten years, so it wasn’t like he was in the middle of any nonsense by the time we got married. They were happy to see him happy.
We settled into married life in Malibu, and Robert moved back into the big house on Tower Lane. We shared visitation 50 percent each, and pretty soon Robert was coming to dinner with me, Bruce, and the kids once a week. Robert wanted to be with the kids as much as he could be. He loved seeing them and he was the greatest dad. “It’s the upside of divorce,” I would tell people. I had the kids every other weekend, and Bruce and I didn’t have any kids of our own. So every other weekend we had all this time to ourselves.
Our first job, though, was making a living. We went to work rebuilding Bruce’s career, with me as his manager by default. Suddenly, I went from being a housewife to having a job. It wasn’t just any job, either: I had to buckle down and figure out a way to make a life for Bruce and me. I had walked away from any substantial money from Robert, and although Bruce was doing motivational speeches and product endorsements, I could see that his work wasn’t going to be enough to keep our life afloat.
The best symbol of where Bruce’s career was at that time was in his sock drawer.
That’s where he kept the gold medal he had won for the decathlon in the 1976 Bicentennial Olympic Games. Granted, there’s only so much juice you can pump out of one Olympic career. Two great days in July 1976 were not going to get us through the rest of our lives. But there was far more to Bruce’s talent and success than those two days in 1976. He was an ordinary kid with dyslexia who worked his ass off and became someone to look up to after winning the Olympics.
I knew we had to tell his story to a world that had forgotten it. We took Bruce’s gold medal out of his sock drawer and dusted it off and framed it in his office, and that became our motivation. We wanted to be champions again.
“We’re going to take the moment that you shined brightest in your life and make sure no one will forget it,” I told Bruce. “There should be Bruce Jenner clothing, Bruce Jenner exercise products, Bruce Jenner endorsement deals, Bruce Jenner vitamin supplements,” I said. “We’ll build this house one speech and one endorsement at a time.”
Bruce didn’t have a press kit, a business card, or even a piece of stationery with his name on it. He didn’t really have an office or a proper business system set up to support what should have been a thriving enterprise. Along the way, somebody missed the boat on an opportunity that could have had legs and longevity and given Bruce a life of more stability.
He was living paycheck to paycheck from his personal appearances and speeches. I had to roll up my sleeves and figure out a better way. I had been around businesspeople my whole life, from my mother and grandmother in their candle shops to Robert Kardashian, and I had ideas about how to improve Bruce’s business. I hired a young woman who had once worked as Robert Kardashian’s assistant, Lisa Frias, and together we set up an office that was very quickly rockin’ and rollin’. We brought in a new computer system to replace Bruce’s twenty-year-old typewriter and hired a production company to assemble a highlight reel of some of his greatest moments as an athlete, speaker, and product endorser. Soon we had a press kit and gorgeous business cards. We put the iconic images of Bruce crossing the finish line in a flash of red, white, and blue at the 1976 Olympic Games on everything. We knew Bruce was good at what he did; we just had to make sure everyone else realized that too.
I sent his press kit to every speakers’ bureau in the United States. It was a huge undertaking, but with my little team of elves, including Lisa, my girlfriend Stephanie Schiller, and a few others, we made Bruce a superstar again. Bruce really knows how to motivate people. He really has a story to tell. He’s great at meet and greets. Everybody loves him. We just had to get him out there in front of the world again. That became my primary focus, eighteen hours a day. Lo and behold, it worked. The speech requests started rolling in, the business changed, we upped his fees, and we got him back on the road again.
