Where would the Kardashians be without Kris Jenner? (Must Read)

 While most concentrate on Kim and her sisters, many haven't taken time to know more about Kris Jenner..The woman who turned the Kardashians in to a household name and built a million dollar empire..A new article by the NewYork Times, gives an insight in to this powerful mother/manager.

 

Kristen Mary Jenner (formerly Kardashian, nee Houghton) was born in San Diego in 1955. Her father and her mother divorced when she was young, and her father left, leaving her with her mother and sister and grandparents, who owned a candle store.

She was 17 when she met Robert Kardashian, a lawyer 11 years her senior, at the Del Mar racetrack, she in a sweeping wide-brimmed white hat, he with a smile that showed how completely smitten he was. He pursued her, but she wanted to discover the world. She became a flight attendant for American Airlines. She accepted his second proposal, and they married when she was 22. They moved to Beverly Hills, where she occupied the social space of the “Real Housewives” of the time.

They had children and spent their weekends in Fila warm-up suits playing tennis with their friends O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson. (After Nicole’s death, Robert would be a member of O.J.’s “dream team” defense, and Kris, married to Bruce by then and pregnant with Kendall, sat in the courtroom gallery in protest and in hope of seeing justice for her friend, wearing Nicole’s hand-me-down maternity clothes.)

By the time she was 30, she had four children, a mansion and a case of ennui that felt terminal. She loved Robert and the life he gave her, but she still felt young and vital. She had an affair with a soccer player, and Robert found out. The divorce was ugly. Kris’s credit cards were canceled, and she was alienated from her friends. She was depressed and miserable, barely able to function throughout the day.

Then one day, in 1990, before her divorce to Robert was final, she went on a blind date with Bruce Jenner: fun, straightforward Bruce. They fell in love immediately. They each had four children and wanted even more. Bruce went to Robert and asked him to finalize the divorce so that he could marry Kris, telling Robert that they didn’t want any of his money. Robert agreed, and Kris and Bruce were married a month after the divorce papers were signed. (She and Robert were on good terms when he died in 2003.)

But they were broke. Bruce had a fledgling business doing motivational speeches, and Kris thought that if she took charge, he could be successful. She put together press kits and contacted speakers’ bureaus. “It was a mix of blood, sweat and tears, enthusiasm, determination and just never sleeping and getting the word out there,” she said. The phone began to ring. On the other end of the line were Coca-Cola and Visa.

Bruce became her first project. She set him up to market his motivational speech, “Finding the Champion Within,” to a wider audience, and she also helped him create a series of workout videos, sold via infomercial, called “Super Fit With Bruce and Kris Jenner.” In the infomercial, he coaches Kris as she walks on a very short treadmill. The success of Bruce’s speaking business was just the first time that Kris realized the pool of talent she had right there in her own home, as well as their potential for financial security.

In 2007, Kris marched into Ryan Seacrest’s office to discuss an idea for a reality show based on her family. She couldn’t help thinking how her large brood — six children, who, when the show made its debut, ranged in age from 7 to 26 — could have mass appeal. “Like, there’s the little girls, and there’s the older girls, and then there’s my son,” she told me. “Everybody thinks that they could create a bunch of drama in their lives, but it’s something that I felt I didn’t even have to think about. It would be natural.”

“The children’s father had passed away,” said Jeff Jenkins, executive vice president of development and programming at Bunim/Murray and an executive producer of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” since its inception. “I think she was a mom very concerned that they had something to build and grow and be secure.”

Culled from the Nytimes