Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (6 page)

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 was 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.

But when the weekend was over, I was still stuck in New York.

I
started lighting candles.

Whenever I could, I would go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and pray. I would light a candle—yes, a candle—because candles have always been lucky for me. I would light candles in that ancient church and pray to God that I would get transferred to Los Angeles.

“You’ll
never
get transferred to Los Angeles,” every flight attendant told me. “You have to have so much seniority. Only ten-year veterans get a sought-after city like L.A.”

I kept praying, praying, praying, and lighting candle after candle, buckling down for the long, hard winter and coming to the realization about how unhappy I would be if I had to stay in New York, especially through the holidays. Christmas has always been my thing. To this day, I am still like a big kid on Christmas. I get
so
excited to decorate my house and spend time with my friends and family and have people over and plan my big Christmas Eve. I am famous for my over-the-top Christmas Eves now, complete with Santas and elves and reindeer and carolers. Back then, though, my Christmases were on a smaller scale. I was alone in New York, without family or friends during my very favorite holidays because of . . . this
job
. Again, I was so young. But I kept lighting candles, praying and believing that something good would happen.

Lo and behold, one day I got a call from the American Airlines corporate office. “I hope this is good news,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “You applied for a transfer to Los Angeles, and your transfer was granted.”

I fell to my knees and thanked God. I was bawling, literally crying, over this miracle. I called Robert. I called my parents. I called everybody.
“I’m coming back to L.A.! I’m coming back to L.A.!”
My mom and Harry flew to New York and helped me move. In those
days you could check as much stuff as you wanted on airplanes, so we packed everything, even my TV, and checked it all.

I got off the plane in L.A.,
my
city, the city of the man I loved—or at least, the man I thought I loved—wearing a pair of cream gabardine wool slacks tucked into brown riding boots and a matching blazer. I had a button-down shirt underneath and I wore a big hat. I collected my luggage and walked outside. Waiting for me at the curb at LAX in his new black Rolls-Royce was my prince, Robert Kardashian. I
ran
to him, literally flew into his arms. “Oh my God, oh my God! I’m finally here!” I cried.

We kissed, long, deep, passionately, and I knew—
This is the one.

We piled everything into the Rolls and drove to his house.

The next morning I immediately started looking for an apartment. It didn’t even occur to me to live with Robert; that just didn’t seem cool. At that time, he was living with both his brother, Tommy, and his best friend O.J. It was a big boys’ club. I called a couple of my flight attendant friends and the three of us found an apartment in Brentwood, close enough to both Robert in Beverly Hills and the Los Angeles International Airport.

Those were magical times. I would work two or three days a week, LAX to New York. I loved doing L.A.–New York because there were no stops. It was just back and forth, and back to Robert and our lovely life together again. Between the flights, Robert and I would play. Every night, it was someplace fabulous for dinner, which in 1977 meant Trader Vic’s, Daisy, and Luau.

Luau was the first place Robert ever took me to dinner in Beverly Hills. Joe Stellini was the maître d’, and Robert ordered this entire dinner for us.

“These are coconut rolls,” Robert told me when a dish of snowy white rolls arrived at our table. I took him at his word, of course, and bit into one. It was a
hand towel
. Robert told that story for
years. He thought it was the funniest thing. He was such a funny guy, and he was always playing practical jokes on everyone. The coconut roll/hand towel bit ranked among his best.

When I moved to Los Angeles, O.J. had been separated from his wife, Marguerite. They tried to work things out and had gotten back together, and when they did, she got pregnant with their daughter Erin. So now, after living with Robert for a time, O.J. was back at home with Marguerite. Then, one day, Robert’s brother surprised us by announcing that he had bought a house in Beverly Hills right across the street from Sammy Davis Jr.

Now Robert and I had the house in Beverly Hills to ourselves, and I soon left the apartment I’d been sharing with the flight attendants. It was a relief to have some space alone with Robert, because when I first moved back to L.A., O.J. and Tommy and all of their friends were always there. The guys would play tennis at one another’s houses, because tennis was the big thing back then. On Saturdays everyone would be at Robert’s house playing tennis. On Sundays we would all be at O.J.’s house playing tennis.

My time living alone with Robert in his big, beautiful house on Deep Canyon Drive would turn out to be short-lived. Robert was a born-again Christian. He prayed before every meal and before each and every business meeting. He even carried a Bible with him. I had grown up going to a Presbyterian church on Sundays and holidays, but I was never really devout, especially not as devout as Robert.

When I went to see Robert for the first time in L.A., I realized that he was actually not only really fun (and funny) but he was also very spiritual. The first thing I noticed was that he had a Bible on his desk and another next to his bed. It was impressive to me that Robert seemed to be such a religious man.
Wow,
I thought,
what an amazing guy.
He wore his Christianity on his sleeve.