Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  At one of Bruce’s speeches, David Heil, who worked for a men’s clothing company called David Rickey & Company, came up to us and said, “I would like to treat your husband to a whole new wardrobe.” He had seen Bruce in a really bad tuxedo and decided we needed help. “Thank you, God!” I said.

  David came over to the house and, sure enough, gave Bruce a whole new wardrobe. He spent hours designing a new look for Bruce, complete with really amazing ties that set his new suits apart from anything I had ever seen before. Soon, Bruce looked the part of the superstar that he truly was. He was an icon, an Olympic champion, a motivational speaker, a dad, and now he was a husband—my husband—and we needed to get to work and get him going again. One day at a time, we did.

  We did a lot of traveling. Bruce was working for companies like Coca-Cola and Visa and all these major organizations that required him to travel. We would do corporate entertaining for Coca-Cola and travel to different parts of the world: the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, or Lillehammer, Norway. We just ran around the world doing different things for different companies and having a blast. Soon, we had solid endorsement deals with different companies. We were on our way as a couple, both in love and in business.

  After living in Malibu for a year and a half, I decided it required too much driving. My girls were going to Marymount, the private all-girls school right on Sunset Boulevard, and it was a little silly to live so far away. So, in the middle of 1992, we leased a house in Beverly Hills. That way the kids were closer to their dad in Beverly Hills, and the whole transition and custody switches were a lot easier. When we were gone, Robert would take care of the kids. He was dating an amazing woman, Denice Halicki, whom I’m sure he was in love with. She was really, really cool, but especially amazing to my kids.

  Our business continued to thrive. We started doing infomercials. We got a call from Jack Kirby, who ran an infomercial company. “How would you like Bruce to do an infomercial about sunglasses?” he asked.

  Bruce flew to Catalina and did that infomercial for Eagle Eyes, and it ended up running on television for ten years. Next, Bruce and I did an infomercial for the Super Step, a home aerobic step program. This one was different because we were going to shoot the infomercial together—and I had never been on television before.

  It was the first time we had ever been asked to do a project together, and I really wanted to do a good job. I stood next to Bruce in my little turquoise spandex shorts and a matching turquoise sports bra. Bruce was cool and collected as always, the seasoned pro; I was shaking like a leaf, so nervous I could barely get my name out.

  “Hi, everybody, I’m Bruce Jenner,” he said.

  My line was supposed to be “And I’m Kris Jenner,” which I must have said fifteen thousand times before I got it right. I was so scared. I wanted to be perfect. I was so excited to be on TV. I was trying really hard. As the shoot went on—for hours, thanks to my verbal missteps—I became a little more comfortable but still so stiff. Poor Jack Kirby, the producer, was like, Oh my God, how are we ever going to get her comfortable on camera? Eventually they did, through trial and error on my part. When the infomercial aired, it shot to number one and stayed on the air for almost two years, making a ton of money for the company and for us.

  One after another, we had more offers for fitness infomercials. We created a series, Super Fit with Kris and Bruce Jenner, for which we filmed even more infomercials together. We were soon on the media circuit, doing interview after interview. We felt so blessed. Everything was going so well: our careers, our kids. Everybody was happy. It was still a little rough around the edges with Robert, but we were working it out.

  Then O.J. and Nicole came back into our lives.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  June 12, 1994

  They were separated, then back together, then separated, then back together, O.J. and Nicole, then O.J. without Nicole, back and forth and back and forth again. Which was really hard on all of us who were their friends.

  When Bruce and I were first dating, one of our first trips together was to Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, to Ethel Kennedy’s house for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights Golf Tournament. Bruce played in that tournament every year. He was very close with Ethel and her kids, all of whom had gone to the Olympic Games in Montreal, where they watched Bruce win his gold medal in 1976. Since then, Bruce and Ethel had been supportive of each other and were great friends.

  At the tournament in Hyannis Port, Bruce ran into his old friend in the locker room: O.J. Simpson. O.J. had been an on-air reporter for ABC at the Montreal Olympic Games in ’76, and he and Bruce had been friends ever since. That day in the locker room, Bruce said to O.J., “I think I am dating a friend of yours.”

  “Who?” asked O.J.

  “Kris Kardashian,” said Bruce.

  “No way,” O.J. said, picking up a phone and calling me on the spot.

  “I think you have something to tell me, Kris,” O.J. said in his deep, melodic, instantly recognizable voice.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m here in Hyannis Port at Ethel’s tournament, and I’m sitting here next to Bruce Jenner, who says he is going out with you,” he said. “What’s going on, Kris? Why didn’t you tell me you were dating Bruce Jenner?!”

  It was a significant phone call. O.J. was like a big brother to me at that point in time. Instead of never speaking to me again after what I did to his best friend Robert, he was now calling me and basically giving me his blessing to date Bruce. He was saying, “Bruce is a great guy. I’m happy for you.”

  “Why don’t we all get together when we all get back home?” O.J. said.

  We did. I hadn’t really seen Nicole and O.J. very much since the beginning stages of my divorce. I didn’t know it then, but Nicole had still been struggling with O.J.’s infidelities, and my unfaithfulness to Robert and our subsequent divorce was very hard on her. She was quite angry with me for throwing away what she considered an awesome marriage to a great guy. She would have done anything to have a husband who was as loyal to her as Robert had been to me. But when we saw each other again, we fell seamlessly back into place. I think Nicole knew how sorry I was about what I had done to Robert and that I had beaten myself up as much as I could, and now I needed to move forward.

  From our first moment together as a foursome, O.J., Nicole, Bruce, and I became very close. It was great to be with Nicole and O.J. again. But by 1993, things were very tricky with them as a couple. They became separated again and were having a really rough time, although I didn’t know the half of it. Not yet, anyway.

  What are you doing for Cinco de Mayo?” Nicole asked me on the phone one day.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I need to get out of here,” she said. “Let’s go to Mexico.”

  I told Bruce about it and he said, “Great.” He had a small private plane at that point, which he piloted himself as a commercially rated pilot. “I’ll get the plane and we’ll fly down and stay at my friend Jerry’s house,” he said.

  I invited Robert’s cousin and my very close friend Cici and my friend Ayshea, and Nicole, Bruce, and I, along with all four of my kids, all flew down to Mexico. My friend Faye Resnick, whom I met when Khloé was in preschool with Faye’s daughter, Francesca, at Beverly Hills Presbyterian, decided to come with Francesca, too. They had a house there, so when they heard we were going down to Cabo San Lucas, they decided to make it one big party. Francesca was Khloé’s best friend, and Faye had been a rock for me throughout my affair with Ryan. She and Nicole were just getting to know each other through me.

  A friend of mine had dated a guy named Joseph, who had become a good friend to all of us. Bruce called Joseph “God’s Gift to Women,” because he was so good looking. We had known Joseph for a long time and really liked him, so at the last minute I invited him too. But he couldn’t ride with us on Bruce’s plane, which was full. “If you can fly all the bags down, I’ll get you a ticket and you’ll stay with us at the house,” I
told Joseph, who said he’d love to do it.

  We had this huge group of people at Bruce’s friend Jerry’s enormous estate, right on the water in Cabo. We arrived on May 2, spent the week down there, and had the best time. We all wanted to be home for Mother’s Day, especially Nicole, who would never miss a Mother’s Day with her two kids. Before we left, though, O.J. caught wind that we were down in Cabo, and he got really upset. He started doing some digging and somehow he found out that Joseph, God’s Gift to Women, was down there with us.

  Jealous? Oh my God! O.J. went crazy with phone calls. He could be pretty persistent when he wanted to be, and he started calling, calling, calling, calling, calling the house and all of our cell phones. Because it was Mexico, it was hard to get calls in and out during that time. Still, enough of his calls got through, and it was absolutely nutty.

  Finally, Mother’s Day arrived, a sunny Sunday morning, and we all got back on the plane to fly home. Back then, private planes coming internationally couldn’t fly straight to L.A. You had to land at Brown Field in San Diego to clear customs. So we flew to Brown Field, and the minute we landed, my phone started blowing up: O.J., O.J., and more O.J. He had already left me a dozen messages, which all sounded the same: “Where is she? I know Joseph’s down there! You guys better tell me what the fuck is going on!” He sounded insane, so jealous that she was on this trip and that Joseph was there too.

  Now he was ranting at me: “Where were you? When are you getting back? What’s going on? Who is Nicole with? What’s this I hear about JOSEPH being down there?!!”

  Joseph was fabulous, and there was absolutely nothing going on between him and Nicole. When we landed at Brown Field, Nicole rented a car to drive herself to her mother’s home in Laguna, where her kids were staying. I don’t think she had told O.J. what her plans were that Mother’s Day.

  That night Bruce and I had Mother’s Day dinner with our kids and settled in for the night. Soon the calls from O.J. started coming fast and furious again. He called me at least fifteen times before I went to bed. He wanted to know everything about the trip, what we had done every second we were there, and what Nicole’s mood had been like. He wanted her back, he said, and how dare she leave him, and who was this guy Joseph? It got so bad that we were more than a little concerned about his state of mind. I think he felt that Nicole had slipped away from him, and he was incensed and angry at the prospect of her being attracted to anyone else or having fun with other people. He wanted to control her, and he wanted to control that trip, even after the fact.

  I have to admit, I felt really bad for O.J. then. Obviously, I didn’t have a crystal ball to see what was coming, but I could tell O.J. was in panic mode and that he needed someone to help calm him down. He was way out of control, and when someone shows you that side of their personality, you can’t just explain it away. We could tell there was a true problem there. But we didn’t know what to do about it—and we never knew where it would eventually lead.

  It was 1992. I think Nicole was at a place in her life where she was finally getting strong enough to be on her own, and she was trying to build up that strength in order to be a good mom and at the same time tell O.J. the one word he didn’t want to hear: “No.”

  She wanted out of her marriage; she had just had enough. But none of us really knew how much “enough” meant. Nicole was extremely private about what she was going through with him. I thought that most of her problem with O.J. was that he wasn’t faithful and he cheated on her, and that that’s what made Nicole so crazy. She didn’t share the abusive side of him with anybody for a really long time. I feel like she finally got the nerve to walk away, and her first step was our trip to Mexico.

  After the trip she began going on about her plans. First, she had to find a place to live. O.J. stayed in the house on Rockingham, while Nicole moved into a small house at 325 Gretna Green Way. O.J.’s house on Rockingham was a gorgeous English Tudor. It was such a beautiful, spacious home where we spent a lot of time and had a lot of memories: we had had a lot of celebrations, we had played a lot of tennis, and we had gone to a lot of dinner parties there.

  I think in the beginning it was a very emotional struggle for Nicole to move out of O.J.’s house on Rockingham and into the house she rented on Gretna Green Way. In moving out, she was finally doing what she felt she needed to do all along. This had great significance for her; she was growing up and being strong, which I wouldn’t learn until after she was gone, because she didn’t tell me she was being abused, and I didn’t recognize the signs of domestic abuse until much later. Now I try to understand what she was going through. I realize how much inner strength she had to muster to be able to do move out on her own without really telling anyone why.

  I went over to see Nicole as she was preparing to leave Rockingham. We went upstairs. On the right was Sydney’s bedroom, and then the next bedroom was Justin’s, and then the last one was O.J. and Nicole’s. We walked into her master bathroom—they had his-and-hers bathrooms, so she had her own—and we stood there talking. She was picking things up to pack and trying to explain to me why she was leaving O.J.’s house, using as little detail as possible, which I now understand.

  We were both standing in front of the sink, looking at each other in the mirror. For some reason we were having this conversation in the mirror, speaking to our reflections instead of face-to-face.

  “This is just something I really need to do,” she said. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “This is so sad,” I said. “I feel so bad.”

  “This is something I really need to do,” she said.

  They had always had a very volatile relationship, with very high highs and very low lows. I was used to the breaking up and making up, but this seemed very final, and I didn’t understand why.

  “Okay,” I said. I just knew that she was serious and committed to making this move, and there was no turning back at that point. “Okay, I’m your friend. No matter what, I’m here for you.”

  Once Nicole decided that the separation was going to be permanent, she bought her town house at 875 South Bundy. I helped Nicole move in. I went over when she was unpacking. Our mutual friend, Faye Resnick, was there too. I walked inside, looked around, and went WOW. Her new home was so beautiful. Nicole loved to decorate and she loved design, and she had transformed the town house in no time at all.

  “Hey, it’s me!” I yelled when I walked in.

  “We’re upstairs!” said Faye.

  I went upstairs, and they were unpacking her closet. I started helping in the closet, and Nicole took out a black Donna Karan sweater with gold buttons and handed it to me.

  “You always loved this sweater, Kris,” she said. “You can have it. I don’t want it anymore.”

  I threw it on immediately, and I still have that sweater to this day.

  Nicole was trying so hard to start anew. She had lived this life with O.J. and she was still in love with him, but the dark side of him outweighed the good side of him, and she had finally had enough. We began going on walks and runs, talking about what was going on in her life.

  Bruce and I had rented a fabulous house in Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills, in the same neighborhood where I had begun my married life with Robert Kardashian. I was finally back in a place where I felt safe and comfortable. I had a new beginning in my life too. I felt that finally everything was going to be okay.

  I felt sure that Nicole was going to have a new life as well. I remember one day specifically: she said she was going to go to Mexico and buy some patio furniture for her place.

  “It’s really cheap and really fabulous down there, and I’m going to get O.J. some too,” she said.

  That kind of showed me that they were still friends and things would probably work out for her, the same way that they really worked out for Robert and me: we could still be a part of each other’s lives, still be friends. After all, we had kids together.

  O.J. and Nicole’s kids, Justin and Sydney, were little, an
d Nicole was such a good mom. A mom who wanted to decorate her own Christmas tree and put all the lights on the house herself. A mom who would go to the flower market once a week and always have fresh flowers everywhere. A mom who had this really nurturing, domestic side. That’s all Nicole wanted out of her life: to be happy and content, and to have peace. That’s what she talked about. She talked about just having that peace.

  Once, when we were walking together, Nicole told me about a woman who she had become attached to who was having domestic violence problems. She was troubled that this woman was living in a shelter and couldn’t afford things for her children. Nicole was trying to raise money for her and her kids. I thought, How did she even hook up with this lady? To this day that conversation haunts me, because on later reflection I realized that Nicole was trying to raise money for a woman she had clearly met in a domestic abuse shelter. I don’t know if Nicole left in the middle of the night one time and ended up at one of those places or what happened, but I would soon be thinking of this conversation often. It haunted me, because I thought, Wow, she was in that much trouble.

  At the time, though, I just thought the women’s shelter was just another charity she was involved with, because as a celebrity wife you get asked to do things from time to time. I thought she was still working with contacts that she had met when she was married to O.J., and now that they were separated, she was going to continue her charitable work, which I thought was really admirable.