by Jenner, Kris
He insisted that the girls go home and think about what they had done and the panic they had created. “Right now, everyone’s really upset,” said the supervisor. “Your kids have to go home.”
So the girls went home and the next day, they boarded another flight to Atlanta. The second time, they made it without incident. In hindsight I guess it should have been foreshadowing to me about the kind of shenanigans Kourtney and Kimberly would get into later. At the time, I was so mad at them, but never happier to see them when they finally landed in Georgia.
We stayed in three adjoining hotel rooms: all four of our kids in one room with twin beds; Bruce, me, and the baby in another; our nanny in the third room. It was crazy, like a big dormitory, and a great adventure. The kids had a ball. I took them to Olympic events, but the biggest event was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Bruce’s gold medal. I had spent months planning a surprise party for him with all his Olympic buddies, our families, and our dearest friends, including Steve and Candace Garvey, who had set us up years before. We had the party at Planet Hollywood, and Access Hollywood, Pat O’Brien, and NBC Sports covered it.
A couple hundred people came to the party. I had hired a producer in Atlanta and spent months making a video of Bruce’s entire life. It included every commercial he ever shot and all the footage from the Olympic Games. I had a crew go around and interview all these people from Bruce’s life about Bruce. We even interviewed President Gerald Ford, because after he sent Bruce a congratulatory telegram when he won the gold at the Olympics, Bruce and President Ford became friends. I interviewed Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford. We set the whole video to inspiring music and there were cheers (and tears) when we played it at the party.
We had custom-made chocolate gold medals and a gorgeous cake—complete with an image of Bruce crossing the finish line—flown in from Hansen’s Cakes in Los Angeles for dessert. I had to buy that cake its own seat on an airplane, and my girlfriend Stephanie Schiller flew to Atlanta in the adjoining seat. The party was a roaring success. It made Bruce feel so special, which was all I wanted. Bruce had a new baby, a new house, and a new wife, and we wanted to celebrate his life.
I had asked Bruce to meet me for a “business dinner” at Planet Hollywood, where I had a crowd waiting. My heart was racing when someone alerted me by walkie-talkie: “Bruce is here, and he’s in the elevator! He’ll be there in a second.” I was so excited. When those elevator doors opened, he was going to see all of his family and the friends he had gathered throughout his lifetime. Even my parents were there, and Bruce’s dad had flown all the way from Lake Tahoe. When Bruce stepped off the elevator, everybody screamed, “Surprise!” He had accomplished so much in his career and in his life, and I was so happy to see the look of joy on his face. I’ll never forget that moment. He was touched, excited, and overwhelmed. It was perfect.
While we were in Atlanta, I kept thinking about the house.
Before we left, we got the news that the escrow on our new house in Hidden Hills had closed, and it was such an exciting day. We had this big new house, which, while not so beautiful at the moment, we were determined to make beautiful. Our family had so much anticipation, so much joy, and so many blessings.
In our large and crazy family, our houses have always been our anchors, the places where we can all find one another no matter how many different directions our individual lives go. That’s why, to this day, our weekly Sunday family dinners are really important to all of us. When we bought that first big house in Hidden Hills, it would quickly come to symbolize to all of us that life was good again. We were really looking forward to going home and packing up our rented house and moving to Hidden Hills.
As soon as we landed in Los Angeles, we immediately went to work. Thank you, Lord, for making Bruce Jenner a handyman! The house was so big, we didn’t even know where to start. We rolled up our sleeves and started with the weather-beaten front doors, which sorely needed a fresh coat of paint. Bruce began sanding the front doors and then painted them. Then we worked our way from front to back. I remember thinking: This is going to be hard work, but a lot of fun. Bruce and I changed all the black marble floors. We pulled up all the purple carpet. We painted the house yellow. We put a picket fence out back and a pool fence around our pool. We started transforming that house into a haven.
We moved in on August 16, 1996, making a million trips from Beverly Hills to Hidden Hills and unpacking rack after rack after rack of clothes. It was 116 degrees in Hidden Hills on the day we moved in. I swear, I don’t think I have ever seen it as hot since! Still, Hidden Hills was fabulous. Every year the community has a parade, and everyone dresses up a vehicle—golf carts, bicycles, even horses—and marches in the parade. Then there is a bake sale and a carnival and a horse show. There is also a riding ring for the horses and also pancake breakfasts every so often. It was like living in the 1950s, so peaceful and quiet. There weren’t even streetlights at night. It was an oasis. It felt like I was dreaming, but I had this beautiful big house in a wonderful community, and we were making it amazing.
Bruce started painting rooms by himself, one by one. Before we moved in, he painted Kendall’s room this gorgeous lemon yellow. Then he painted Robert’s room navy blue; Kourtney’s cream; Khloé’s shabby-chic green; and Kim’s pale pink. The rooms all took on their own personalities, and they were each so beautiful.
All the rooms in the new house were huge, and each bedroom had its own patio. We were redoing all the floors downstairs with big Mexican paving stones, because they fit the style out there. The construction crew gave me extra tiles. I had them mix up cement for me, and I ended up tiling Kendall’s patio all by myself, plastering, spreading, and leveling each tile by hand.
Bruce and I were having the times of our lives painting and tiling. Then one day I saw a magazine cover with a picture of a picket fence and white iceberg roses all over it. I woke up the next morning and told Bruce, “We have to have white iceberg roses!” We went to a nearby nursery and bought three hundred white iceberg rosebushes. Poor Bruce not only built and painted the picket fence with a fence digger by himself—he had a whole workshop set up in the garage by now, with a table saw and a virtual paint store with brushes and gardening tools—he also planted all three hundred white iceberg rosebushes.
While we were renovating our new house, we were also raising five kids. Bruce was flying in and out of town on personal appearances, and the house was slowly being transformed into a magical place. We finally redid the pool and put a putting green in the backyard for Bruce. One day my friend Mary Frann, who played Bob Newhart’s wife on Newhart, came to stay overnight in our new house. We were walking back from the community bake sale when she noticed that my house didn’t have a sign with the name of the house in the yard like the other Hidden Hills homes all did. Every house in Hidden Hills has a name, and we hadn’t named ours yet. “You should name it ‘The Haven,’” Mary Frann told me. The next day, we ordered a sign for our house: “The Haven.” That has been the name of our house ever since, even as we moved from one house to another, and that’s sort of how we’ve thought of all the houses we’ve lived in together as a family.
We were obsessed with our new house; it signified the end of a long journey for Bruce and me as a couple. We were so proud to be in this place in our lives. Once again I began entertaining with as much passion as before, hosting birthday parties, Easter egg hunts, Thanksgivings, and ginormous Christmas Eves and Christmas Days with Santas and elves.
The house brought us luck and good fortune. On our first Christmas in Hidden Hills, Bruce and I discovered we were pregnant again. On August 10, 1997, our second daughter together—and my sixth child, the realization of my lifelong dream of having six kids—was born. Of course, we had to name her with a K, and we found the perfect name, “Kylie.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Healing and Forgiveness
The next several years were peaceful, wonderful, busy years. Kourtney and Kimberly each took turns living with
their dad at the end of their high school experiences. I think both of them felt there was just always so much going on in my household—a whirlwind of activity every single day, with babies and people (business and personal) in and out—and the girls found peace and more attention at their dad’s house. It was good for them. Robert had gone to law school, obviously, and was really into study skills and the importance of excelling in school, which was not really my cup of tea. Robert was also single at the time, and he could devote himself to dinners with them one-on-one and good, quality bonding time.
Kourtney went off to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Having Kourtney leave for college was a significant moment. As you know by now, I have always dreamed of having the perfect family, complete with a wonderful husband and six beautiful kids. But I never got to the part in my dream when one of them would leave for college. I certainly wasn’t ready to let Kourtney go. I was so preoccupied with changing diapers and keeping Bruce’s business going, I didn’t give much thought to the fact that Kourtney was actually and truly going to leave for college. When the day came, I was an absolute mess.
Her dad and I decided that it would be a good idea for the entire family—Robert, me, and the four kids we’d had together—to fly to Dallas to get Kourtney settled at SMU. We arrived and spent a couple of great days in Texas together. Then it came time to say good-bye, and a pit began growing in my stomach, probably the biggest pit I’ve ever had. I just didn’t know how to say good-bye. I had never been away from my firstborn, ever. Now here she was, moving to another city in a distant state. I had once told her she should go to college in a different state so she could have all of these new and fresh experiences. Now I realized that she would be so far away, and it totally turned my world upside down. What was I thinking? I started to uncontrollably sob and become a complete wreck; this exact same emotion would continue before and after every single visit with Kourtney in college until the day she graduated from the University of Arizona, to which she would eventually transfer from SMU.
I knew then that being separated from my children would never be something I could handle. I knew I had to figure a way to keep my babies close in the future. The answer would come soon enough, and, as with everything, it would come in a big and dramatic way.
During those years in Hidden Hills, Khloé, my youngest daughter with Robert, grew up a lot. She was very mature for her age. She was too young to be in Kourtney’s peer group and she wasn’t quite in Kimberly’s tight circle of friends, and she didn’t really have a developed circle of her own. Those kinds of friendships are developed when children are young, and they often have something to do with the parents nurturing those relationships. By the time Khloé came around, I was entrenched in my own friendships and I never really made a group of friends centered on her. I believe all of these factors played into who my girls would eventually become.
For me, Khloé was a godsend. She had decided to get her education via homeschooling—and she was an incredible student—which enabled her to become a built-in babysitter and my right arm. Khloé was so loving and nurturing, and she loved playing with our two babies and helping me feed them and watch them. I would have had to give up so much if I had not had Khloé there to help. Without Khloé, I don’t know how I would have gone on with my life. After all, I was forty by then, and I was starting over with a new husband, two new babies, a new house, and a new business—all of which added up to a lot of new responsibilities. Because of Khloé, I was able to attend business meetings, work out, get my hair cut, even have lunch with a friend. Because of Khloé, I was able to get back to being myself again, and I will never forget the sense of freedom this gave me.
Khloé gave me the world’s biggest gift and she probably doesn’t even get how important she was to me. To this day, Kendall and Kylie feel that Khloé is their second mom, which she is. The love that I felt for Khloé for so selflessly helping me in those early years would bond Khloé and me together forever. I will always be grateful to her.
So while Khloé was happy to be part of my life with Kendall and Kylie and to be the ultimate big sister, Kourtney and Kimberly were more eager to leave the nest and test their independence. After Kourtney spent her last year and a half of high school with Robert and left for college, Kimberly moved in with her dad in Kourtney’s place.
I had no idea that my family, my home, would someday become an entertainment empire. Like everything else in my life, it would just flow from my love of home and family. However, our daily life and the environment in which my children were raised were always dramatic and exciting. There was never a dull moment, good or bad. I think part of what shaped my girls is the constantly evolving family dynamic and unconditional love. During this time, my kids developed independence, responsibility, character, integrity, and a work ethic. They were on their way.
Kourtney and Kimberly both got new cars as soon as they got their driver’s licenses, and soon it was Khloé’s turn. Initially, Robert just gave Khloé one of his cars, and definitely not a Rolls. It was an old jalopy. Khloé felt like the odd sister out: her sisters had both received brand-new cars, but Khloé got Robert’s hand-me-downs. I finally talked Robert into giving Khloé a new car for Christmas that year. It was so cute. On Christmas morning, Robert came over to our house and snuck in the back door before the girls woke up. We all gave her the keys to her brand-new Mercedes together. She was thrilled.
As each child took turns living with Robert, I would buy each of them all new bedding and redo the bedroom in Robert’s house so that they felt at home in her or his own space. When Kourtney moved in with Robert, we decorated her new bedroom at his house in all new Ralph Lauren sheets and décor. When she moved out to go to college, I redecorated the same room to fit Kim’s tastes and style. Khloé didn’t go that route and stayed with me, but Rob decided to move in with his dad when he was fifteen. He was going through some tough years in school, along with puberty, and he needed his dad. So each of them had that time there with him.
My oldest girls, Kourtney and Kimberly, grew up fast and began to date very seriously very early. Back in 1992, when Kim was around thirteen, she began dating TJ Jackson, Tito Jackson’s son and Michael Jackson’s nephew. At that time we were still living in our Beverly Hills rental. I knew all the Jackson boys—Michael’s nephews—because Kourtney and Kimberly had started going to the Buckley School with them in preschool. The girls made most of their lifelong friends at the Buckley School, and they had known the Jacksons forever. So when Kim started dating TJ, I was thrilled, because he was so great and our families really liked each other. TJ became one of my own and I adored him.
Tragically, right after we lost Nicole is the summer of 1994, TJ’s mom, Delores “Dee Dee” Jackson, was also brutally murdered. Dee Dee was an amazing person and such a good mother. The Jackson kids all loved their mother so much. After the murder, TJ moved in with us briefly and healed a bit at our house. He and I really bonded. We all just kind of held each other close, as all of us were healing from various things. We became like one big family.
For Kim’s fourteenth birthday, Michael Jackson invited all of us up to the Neverland Ranch for her birthday party. Kim invited all her friends, and I rented a Mercedes bus. Bruce and I came with all the kids, as well as TJ, Taryll, and Taj Jackson, and we all spent the night at Neverland. We had the time of our lives. I can only imagine how much fun Kim had and what a memory it was for her, because it was one of the most magical places I had ever been—and I was an adult!
When you walked into Neverland, you felt like you were in a very magical place. The house, amusement park, carnival rides, flowers, and the petting zoo . . . all were too astonishing to believe.
We never saw Michael. I was told he was there that night, but he never came out to say hello. However, we couldn’t miss seeing his generosity and the love and the passion that he put into his home. The people who worked there were so accommodating and sweet, and the whole ranch had such good energy. We watched
movies, we ate candy, we rode go-karts, we had a water balloon fight in the fort, we went horseback riding, and we played with the monkeys.
Kim and TJ dated for several years, and TJ would come along on family ski vacations with us. We all became extremely close and felt like TJ was part of our family. Eventually, though, Kim and TJ’s relationship ended. We were devastated when they told us. I felt like I broke up with him. I was in my bathroom when the two of them told me, and I just became inconsolable. I felt so bad for TJ, because he had to try to make me feel better about their breakup as I was bawling in my bathroom.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay,” TJ kept repeating.
I think that, somehow, everything that I had been through in the previous couple of years just kind of manifested in the breakup of Kim and TJ. He was her first true love. They went to the prom together and had so many memories. We love TJ. To this day, I feel like he’s one of my kids.
Several years after they broke up, he called me out of the blue. “Hi, Kris, where are you?” he asked me.
“Running an errand,” I said.
“Can you come home? I have a surprise for you.”
“You do?!”
“Yeah, but you have to come home right now.”
So I rushed home to the house in Hidden Hills.
“Where’s TJ?” I asked Bruce.
“He’s in Khloé’s room,” he answered. I walked into Khloé’s room, and TJ was standing there, hiding something behind him.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He stepped to the side, and this tiny toddler was sitting on the floor.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“This is my baby,” he said. “I just wanted you to meet him.”
