Kris Jenner is the most famous momager in the world, but she didn’t always have a good sense of money management. During an interview with WSJ. Magazine, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians matriarch said she was clueless about finances while married to her first husband, famed attorney Robert Kardashian.
“One day, my friend Shelli Azoff said to me when I was going through my divorce [from Robert], ‘How much is your gardener?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And she said, ‘You don’t know?’ That was the turning point for me: I was embarrassed that I didn’t know,” Kris recalls in the latest digital cover story.
Kris met Robert when she was 17 and married him four years later. They went on to have four (very famous) children: Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Rob Kardashian. The couple divorced in 1991.
“I woke up one day to responsibilities that I hadn’t had the day before. And I needed to figure it out. And the good news is, I pay attention… I’m a quick study and I knew I had to get it together,” Kris continues. “And I felt such an enormous sense of accomplishment to be able to figure it all out and pay my own bills and make my own money and do my own taxes. And there were times when I didn’t have a lot of money, but I was very organized.”
Kris added, “I’m interested in different ways that people make money — and in what’s happening around the world. And I’m interested in different businesses and how they evolve and how they become successful… I just enjoy the business world.”
The reality-star-turned-multimillionaire is a quick study indeed. According to Forbes, she has an estimated net worth of $190 million. Kris plays a role in all of her children’s endorsement deals, getting her usual 10 percent cut — like when Coty paid $600 million in 2019 for a 51 percent stake in Kylie Jenner’s brand, Kylie Cosmetics. She also facilitated Coty’s $200 million purchase of a 20 percent stake in Kim Kardashian West’s cosmetics line, KKW Beauty.
According to Ryan Seacrest, the co-creator of KUWTK, Kris can hold her own in the boardroom with the best of them.
“She’s one of the best dealmakers that I’ve ever seen deal. And I’ve sat with the Merv Griffins and Dick Clarks of the world and watched them negotiate deals, watched them on television and be the most congenial, affable, wonderful host and then sit down at the table at the Beverly Hills Hotel and be a tough dealmaker,” Seacrest tells WSJ. Magazine. “She has both of those qualities, which is rare.”
The Live With Kelly & Ryan host adds that she has respect around the industry.
“I think the people in the entertainment business, people in Hollywood, people who make products that fit the family for marketing, they realize that she is this incredible engine behind all of it,” he adds. “They realize, actually, the power that she has.”
WSJ. Magazine’s digital cover story with Kris Jenner is out on Tuesday.
