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What did Kris Jenner do before she was famous?

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Cosmopolitan

It's hard to imagine a world before Kris Jenner was the ultimate matriarch and 'momager', but such a world once existed. Kris wasn't always the head of the Kardashian-Jenner dynasty, in fact she once worked in a doughnut shop and later as an airline steward. Here's what Kris did before she became the famous momager we know today.

As a teenager Jenner reportedly had a job in a doughnut shop before going to work at a clothing store opened by her mum and grandmother. In an interview for Beyond Candid With Giuliana! Kris said that working for her mother and grandmother helped her learn how to run a business.

Later, in her early twenties Jenner reportedly worked as a junior flight attendant for American Airlines before marrying Robert Kardashian a year later in 1978 and starting a family together.

After Kris and Robert split in March 1991, she would go onto marry former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner later that year with the pair welcoming two more children, Kylie and Kendall. By this point, according to The Wall Street Journal, Kris had begun a career as a motivational speaker, although she hadn't been hugely successful. After her marriage to Caitlyn, Kris's life changed completely, she began acting as Caitlyn's manager and together the pair made infomercials for exercise equipment.

Years later, Kris took her idea of a reality TV show about her family to E! producer Ryan Seacrest. She told The New York Times Magazine in 2015, "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."

Seacrest, luckily, was on the look out for a new fly-on-the-wall show after the success of The Osbournes, he told Access in 2013.

"I had seen The Osbournes and thought to myself — because I had formed a production company — I thought we should find something in this vein. And at the time, we had heard that Kris was interested in doing something with the family, so it was me and one other guy at the company. I had to buy a video camera for this shoot to go to a barbecue they were having on a Sunday. And I remember thinking to myself, 'Is this going to be worth spending X amount of [company] dollars?'

Photo credit: Jeff Vespa - Getty Images
Photo credit: Jeff Vespa - Getty Images

"We went up and we shot a barbecue on a Sunday of the family. They were all together — as crazy and as fun as loving as they are — and they were throwing each other in the pool and I came back and saw the tape. And I thought, 'Oh my God, we've got to show this to E!' ... We had no idea it would become the monster pop culture business that it is."

You can catch new episodes of KUWTK on E! and Hayu every Friday.

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