Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian Read online

  My father was cremated.

  At the funeral, I remember someone told me that my paternal grandmother had seen his body the day before. I thought, Nobody asked me if I wanted to see him one last time. That hurt. Not just that I wasn’t asked, but that they seemed to view me as a child. My mom took us to the funeral and I remember how strong she was in supporting my sister and me.

  I found myself thinking about how much I wished my dad had met Robert Kardashian. He had begun calling again. I didn’t know what to do. I was still engaged to Anthony and I didn’t know how to juggle the two.

  “Maybe we should get together,” Robert would say, and I would hem and haw and answer, “Maybe we should. I’d love to see you. But let’s see what happens.”

  We would make a plan. But every time I would cancel at the last minute. “I just can’t come,” I would say in a phone call the night before or the morning of the planned rendezvous. I came up with the stupidest excuses. I had a toothache or whatever, but how many toothaches can one person have? When I ran out of teeth, I told him I had sprained my ankle or I had the flu. It became ridiculous.

  The whole situation came to a head when Anthony was invited to play in the British Open. Tom Watson was playing there, too, and he and his wife, Linda, had rented a house on the golf course in England. “Why don’t you and Anthony get married in our backyard here?” Tom and Linda told us. “How much fun would that be!” they said. “That’s a great idea!” Anthony replied. I was thinking, Not so much.

  I didn’t want to marry Anthony. We eventually decided that perhaps a European wedding without my family wasn’t such a great idea. Still, I was up for the trip.

  Right before I left for Europe, Robert called me and said, “I bought a new house in Beverly Hills, and my brother and I are having a housewarming party. I would really like you to be my date, and it’s really important to me that you give me a yes or a no.”

  At that point I had decided that I was going to break things off with Anthony in Europe and see if I wanted to date Robert after doing that. I told Robert about my plan to break up with Anthony in Europe and come home by myself, and told him, yes, I would be his date to his big, important party.

  He immediately told everyone he knew that he had met a fabulous girl and she would be his date to his housewarming party. But once I was in Europe with Anthony, I couldn’t figure out how to get out of there. I had no backbone. I couldn’t figure out how to tell Anthony it was over and that I was going home on my own. Finally, the day of Robert’s party came, and instead of meeting him on the 5:00 p.m. plane from San Diego to Los Angeles as I had promised, I was still in Europe with Anthony. I didn’t even have the guts to call Robert and tell him I wasn’t coming.

  Robert was at the airport waiting for me, standing at the gate with two dozen red roses. He waited until every single person came off that plane before giving up on me. He turned around, walked to the trash can, and threw the roses away. He walked to his car alone and cried all the way home.

  At his party, he had to face all his friends who were expecting to meet this great new girl he had told them all about. I had made him look like a fool. He didn’t have a girlfriend, he didn’t have a date. This was his big, huge party, and I had blown him off.

  I was so young, and I had a lot to learn. When I called him the next day to say “I’m so, so sorry,” I could hear him crying on the other end of the line. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Suddenly he turned angry. “You embarrassed me,” he said. “You made me look bad. When you finally figure this all out, give me a call.”

  Then he hung up.

  I returned from Europe with Anthony, still unable to figure out how to call things off. Fortunately, Anthony made it easy for me. His next tournament was in Pebble Beach. I went with him and took my parents, and after the tournament I left with my parents for a trip down the coast to the Hearst Castle. Anthony couldn’t come along, he said, because he had to get to the next city on the tour.

  When I got back to his house, though, I received a letter in the mail. Inside was a hotel receipt from Carmel showing that Anthony had stayed in Carmel four days longer than he had told me. Then a young woman started calling the house, looking for Anthony. She wanted to know who I was and why I was answering his phone. “Who the hell are you?” I asked. She told me she had spent four days with Anthony in Carmel, after which he left for his next golf tournament. Now she couldn’t find him. He wasn’t returning her phone calls. She was pissed, which was why she called me.

  I was so mad, but also glad. Now I had a backup plan. I had been too weak to break up with him. Now Anthony had made things easy for me. I packed my bags and put everything in my car, thinking, I wasn’t raised to be a victim. I was raised to be a strong, confident girl who knows when it is time to fold ’em. I waited until he came home, and when he walked through the door, I told him that we were done, and I told him why. He denied, denied, denied.

  “I really don’t care,” I said. “I’m out of here.”

  I went to my mother’s house and called Robert. “It’s over, I’m done,” I said.

  “Okay, if you’re done, then why don’t you come see me this weekend?”

  “Great. I’ll be there,” I said.

  I got dressed, got on a plane, and flew to L.A., where I rushed out of the airport to meet Robert Kardashian for our first legitimate date. Sitting in a green Mercedes, waiting for me at the curb at the airport, were Robert and O.J. Simpson.

  “This is O.J., my best friend,” Robert told me, introducing me to the famous football player, while I’m thinking, Oh my God. Oh my GOD! We drove back to Robert’s house in Beverly Hills: Robert Kardashian, O.J. Simpson, and me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Flying High

  Robert and his brother, Tommy, had bought a beautiful house on Deep Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. It had a tennis court and a swimming pool, and they were living the life. Judy Wilder, a really well-known interior designer, decorated the house. If you had your house decorated by Judy Wilder, you were stylin’. Tommy ran the family meatpacking business, and Robert was an attorney with a group of Armenian lawyers, Eamer, Bedrosian & Kardashian. He worked with all kinds of people, including O.J. Simpson.

  Robert took me back to his house and showed me around, and then he took me to his mother’s house, where I met his mother and practically his entire family. I could not believe what a nice family he had and what wonderful family values they embodied. They loved one another so much. His mother had made this thing called beeshee, an Armenian breakfast pastry. It’s a big, flat, fried pancake with sugar or syrup on top. My daughter Kourtney got the recipe from Robert’s mother before she died, and now we make it for family occasions. It’s one of my most favorite things in the world now because of the strong family values it represents. Plus, it’s absolutely delicious.

  So Robert’s mom had made beeshee, and they had people and friends stopping in to meet me. Afterward, we went back to Robert’s house and I met a few more of his friends as well as his brother Tommy’s friends. It was a turning point. I thought, This could very well be the guy for me.

  Every weekend for three weeks after that, I flew up to visit Robert. That first weekend, I met his friends and his parents, and had the time of my life. The second weekend, I met more of his friends and stayed at his house. The third weekend, he sat me on his lap on the chair behind his bedroom desk and said, “Will you marry me?”

  “What?!” I said.

  “Will you marry me?” he repeated.

  I stammered something to the effect of “I don’t think I can marry you right now. I mean, it’s kind of soon.”

  He was beyond upset; he was devastated. When I said no, Robert’s face just fell. He had me sitting on his lap and he was so excited. He had experienced this revelation that he had finally found the love of his life, and I just didn’t understand. I later learned that he had told all his friends and colleagues about me, telling them that I looked like Natalie Wood. (I fou
nd that funny!) Now I was making him look bad, because I was refusing his proposal. But I had just been through this crazy thing with Anthony, and I wasn’t ready to jump back into another engagement so soon. After all, I wasn’t even twenty.

  Robert and I continued dating, but he was angry and took serious issue with me for declining his marriage proposal. I returned to San Diego and decided that I was going to take control of my life. I started by deciding to apply to become an American Airlines flight attendant instead of going to college. The only part of high school I enjoyed was the social aspect. I was just not into school. I wanted to get on with my life.

  Within a week, I applied for, interviewed for, was offered, and accepted a job. American immediately flew me to Fort Worth, Texas, to begin six weeks of flight attendant school.

  Robert wasn’t happy. He took it personally and believed that by turning him down and preparing to fly off into the sunset with American, I was slamming his character and who he was as a human being. I still felt like I had made the right decision, and I certainly didn’t think he would jump back into the dating scene immediately. When I flew away, he began dating someone else right away: Priscilla Presley.

  Robert and Tommy Kardashian were two of the most eligible bachelors in Beverly Hills at that time. They were at the top of their game: cool, successful, good-looking, and from a great family. Everyone wanted to date them. Tommy was dating Joan Esposito, the ex-wife of Elvis Presley’s close friend Joe Esposito. Tommy and Joan decided that it would be a great idea to set up Robert with Priscilla. Robert was instantly smitten with Priscilla, and she apparently was smitten with him. They quickly moved in together.

  Payback is a bitch.

  I was living in a flight attendants’ dormitory in Fort Worth, bummed that Robert was going to end up with Priscilla Presley. She was gorgeous, of course, petite and perfect and beautiful and famous. I would see pictures of her and just die. Any woman would be thrilled to look like Priscilla Presley.

  I was at flight school, doing my thing, but again, I was bummed. Not devastated—I had been the one to turn him down, after all—but disappointed, because deep in my heart I was still hoping that Robert would end up being the guy for me.

  We became telephone buddies again. We would talk every night, me on the public telephone in the hallway of my dorm, Robert in Beverly Hills. I had to keep putting quarters into the pay phone to finish our conversations and kept rolls of quarters and dimes on hand for my nightly phone calls with Robert. Of course, he could have easily called me, but I didn’t want to admit to Robert that I was having to feed a pay phone. We would talk about Priscilla. “Gosh, what do you think I should get her for her birthday?” he would say. I would listen to his stories about her and he would listen to mine about American Airlines flight attendant school.

  Before I knew it, six weeks had flown past. I had put my nose to the grindstone in flight attendant school, hoping to distract myself from what was going on with Robert. I tried to avoid the National Enquirer, because Robert and Priscilla were frequently inside—or even on the cover—together. Thank goodness we didn’t have the Internet or TMZ during those days.

  Flight attendant school kept me busy and distracted me from dwelling over whether or not my future would be with Robert Kardashian—until my graduation in August 1976. I had given American my preferences for my base city: Los Angeles was my first choice in the hopes I would be able to reconnect with Robert. San Diego was my second choice. San Francisco was third. American didn’t tell you where you would be based until the last minute, so I still didn’t know.

  Then Robert called and said that he and Priscilla had broken up.

  “When do you graduate?” he asked. “And where will you be based?”

  I told him I wouldn’t know for two more weeks. As the weeks went by, it became clear that Robert had decided he wanted to continue to pursue me, and he was antsy to know where the pursuit would take place. Well, I didn’t get any of my choices. Instead, I would be based in New York City. I was devastated . . . and scared. I was twenty years old, one of the youngest people American had ever put through flight school, and I was leaving the state where I had spent my entire life to move all the way across the country to New York.

  “Where did you get? Where did you end up?” Robert asked.

  “New York,” I said despondently.

  “That’s actually good news!” he said. “Because I’m going with O.J. Simpson to the games [the 1976 Olympics] in Montreal, and afterward we have to go straight to New York for O.J.’s job with ABC.”

  O.J. was going to work as a commentator at the Olympic Games that year, Robert said, and we were all going to meet in New York and pick up where we left off in L.A. “O.J.’s going to get rooms at the Plaza,” Robert told me. “It will be great. You can meet us there.”

  As Robert had promised, it was exciting. Robert and O.J. met me at the airport and we all rode into the city together in a limo and checked into the Plaza. I had never really been in a limo before, and I certainly had never been to the Plaza, so I just felt like the luckiest girl in the world. First, we went shopping. Then, dinner at ‘21’ and dancing at Studio 54. But it was more than just where we went and what we did; it was how it felt. I could feel electricity in the air around us. From the moment I stepped off that airplane and met Robert at the gate, I could feel everything around me changing so fast. I knew my life would never be the same again.

  The funniest moment happened on our New York City trip. Bruce Jenner had won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics, so Robert and O.J. were all excited, saying, “Bruce Jenner won the gold medal!”

  Bruce was, of course, the champion of the 1976 summer Olympic Games in Montreal, the symbol of athletic heroism in America. Everybody remembered the huge moment when Bruce blazed across the finish line in the 1,500-meter run, his arms high over his head as the crowd went crazy, as he broke the world record and won the gold. Everybody remembered Bruce except me.

  “Who’s Bruce Jenner?” I asked.

  O.J., on the other hand, was a star. He was crazy fun and incredibly famous. After running for touchdowns in his NFL career, a Heisman Trophy winner and a professional football superstar, he ran through airports in Hertz commercials, found fame as a network television sports commentator, and had endorsement deals for companies like Dingo boots. Fans followed O.J. wherever he went. And when he took us to the Dingo store on Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and bought us all boots, people gawked and asked for his autograph.

  Even though everyone knew O.J. was married, he brought along Maud Adams, the famous model and James Bond girl. I thought, My, he has pretty friends! But we were having way too much fun to dwell on it, and after all, I wasn’t his babysitter.

  O.J. loved to dance, and we all loved to drink. We never got crazy drunk, but we all liked to have a good time.

  I was on cloud nine all of that week. Then Robert and O.J. went home. The week American Airlines was giving me to find my sea legs in New York City was over. Talk about a cold-water moment. I went from living the high life in the Plaza to sharing an apartment way up on Ninety-Ninth Street and First Avenue with four flight attendant roommates. It was the only way I could afford the rent. The four of us were crammed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment, two women to a room, sleeping on twin beds. I remember pushing my little bed on its frame up against the wall beneath a window. Wow. I had a view of a brick wall across an alley. I felt so impatient knowing I was stuck in New York alone. Wait, this isn’t part of my plan! I thought.

  Still, New York was exciting—at least at first. Having grown up in San Diego, I was living a life I had never lived before. I had never lived in a high-rise, never ridden in a cab, never really used public transportation. Now I was taking a subway to get to work at LaGuardia, because that was the hub for most of my flights.

  My life as a flight attendant was like something out of a movie. I had a blue blazer with wings on my lapel, and I was very professional. American wa
s very strict about the dress code, and my hair was always picture-perfect. I had my skirt just the right length, I had just the right jacket. I took it all very seriously.

  Ultimately, there was always some character on the airplane who wanted to reach out and touch someone—literally. “Hey, baby,” the wolves would leer. “What are you doing tonight?” I was an airline attendant, not a hooker. So I kept my hot, very steamy pot of coffee with me at all times. It’s amazing how a guy’s attitude would change when I held a hot pot of coffee over his crotch.

  I was flying everywhere. To and from all of the places American flies all over the country—Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus. After a few months of that, a seasoned flight attendant took me under her wing and told me that if I really wanted to go home more, I should sign up to be an “Extra.” The senior flight attendants all got to do the L.A.–New York and New York–L.A. routes, she told me. But because they had so much seniority, they also took time off for vacation whenever they wanted. “Extras” were the girls who filled their slots. I signed up to be an Extra.

  It saved my relationship with Robert. All I did from that point on was fly New York to L.A., L.A. to New York, and back and forth again and again and again, all on overnight trips. Robert would pick me up at the airport and we would go straight to lunch and spend the day together. We did that for several months. We were getting closer and closer.