Jan Ashley was a former American beauty queen and the second wife of attorney Robert Kardashian Sr. Born Janice Lynn Glass on August 3, 1948, in Amarillo, Texas, she is best known for a marriage to Kardashian in November 1998 that lasted roughly 30 days and for claims she made in January 2012 about Khloé Kardashian’s paternity. She died on October 1, 2015, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was 67.
Most of what has been written about her stops at those two lines. The full account starts decades earlier and covers a life that had real shape long before the Kardashian name was involved.
Table of Contents
| Quick Facts | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Birth Name | Janice Lynn Glass |
| Date of Birth | August 3, 1948 |
| Birthplace | Amarillo, Texas |
| Pageant Title | Miss Tulsa, 1966 |
| First Husband | John Ashley, actor and producer (m. 1978) |
| John Ashley’s Death | October 3, 1997, New York City (heart attack) |
| Second Husband | Robert Kardashian Sr. |
| Wedding Date | November 25, 1998, Vail, Colorado |
| Marriage Duration | Approximately 30 days |
| Annulment Finalised | 1999 |
| Known For | 2012 Star Magazine interview on Khloé Kardashian’s paternity |
| Date of Death | October 1, 2015, Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| Age at Death | 67 |
| Burial | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, California |
| Children | None (biological) |
From Amarillo to Tulsa: Her Early Years
Jan grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after her family relocated from Amarillo, Texas. In 1966, at 17, she won the Miss Tulsa title. This was a city-level competition, not a state title, but city pageants carried genuine social significance in mid-century Oklahoma. They brought public exposure, professional contacts, and access to networks that otherwise stayed closed to young women without industry connections.
She did not pursue entertainment after winning. There is no public record of what she did between 1966 and 1978. She was a private person before she became adjacent to famous ones, and that stretch of her life was kept that way.
Her First Marriage: John Ashley
In 1978, Jan married John Ashley, an actor and television producer she met in Tulsa. Their Oklahoma roots ran along similar lines. John had grown up in Tulsa himself, attending Will Rogers High School before earning a degree in economics at Oklahoma State University on a wrestling scholarship. He later relocated to Hollywood and built a career on two tracks: acting through the 1960s and producing through the 1970s and 1980s.
His producing credits by the time of the marriage included:
- The A-Team (NBC, 1983 to 1987)
- Walker, Texas Ranger
- A production coordination role on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)
Jan was his third and final wife. She maintained a private life throughout his career. The marriage lasted nearly two decades.
On October 3, 1997, John Ashley died of a heart attack in a parking lot outside a New York City studio where he was producing his final film, Scar City. He was 62. Jan was 49.
How Jan Ashley Met Robert Kardashian
Months after John Ashley’s death, Robert Kardashian Sr. came across a photograph of Jan while she was selling a property. He arranged an introduction through mutual contacts, and the two began seeing each other in 1998.
By that point, Robert’s personal history was complicated. The 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial had made him one of the most recognisable attorneys in the country. His marriage to Kris Jenner had ended in 1991, when he filed for divorce citing her infidelity. A long engagement to his third cousin Denice Shakarian Halicki had followed and eventually ended without a wedding.
He was 54 when they met. She was 49.
After roughly seven months together, he proposed in Hawaii. They married on November 25, 1998, in a private ceremony in Vail, Colorado. Robert’s four children, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob, were present for the honeymoon trip.
Why the Marriage Lasted Only 30 Days
The annulment came approximately 30 days after the wedding and was finalised in 1999.
Jan spoke about the collapse in interviews over the following years. According to her, Robert was not emotionally clear of his first marriage. In a later interview with Radar Online, she said he spoke about Kris Jenner’s alleged affairs “day in and day out” and that financial conflict involving Kris and the children was a constant presence. She identified this as the primary cause.
Robert’s own court filings recorded a separate factor. According to those documents, the two had agreed before the wedding to have a child together. He reversed that decision after the ceremony.
Both accounts point to the same underlying condition: a man who came into a second marriage carrying the full unresolved weight of the first.
What Jan Ashley Claimed About Khloé Kardashian
More than a decade after the annulment, Jan returned to public attention.
In January 2012, she gave an interview to Star Magazine in which she said Robert Kardashian had told her, shortly after their wedding, that Khloé was not his biological daughter. The interview was covered by ABC News and The Washington Post, both of which quoted her directly.
Her account, as reported by ABC News:
“Khloe is not his kid. He told me that after we got married. He just kind of looked at me and said it like it was a matter of fact. He said, ‘Well, you know that Khloe’s not really a Kardashian, don’t you?’ And I said… ‘OK,’ and that was it.”
Robert’s third wife, Ellen Pierson, gave a separate statement to the same publication, saying Robert had shared the same doubts with her.
The interview appeared approximately one year after Kris Jenner published her memoir, Kris Jenner… And All Things Kardashian (November 2011), in which she admitted to having had an affair while married to Robert. The man later publicly identified as her affair partner was soccer player Todd Waterman.
The Kardashian Family’s Response
Khloé’s reaction arrived the same week the story ran. As reported by ABC News:
“The audacity you have to mention my father’s name like this! Should be ashamed of urself! I let a lot of things slide but this one is really low.”
Kris Jenner addressed the claims on Good Morning America from Las Vegas, where she was attending the Miss America pageant as a judge. She pushed back without offering a DNA-based denial, noting the family had already been living with questions about Khloé’s appearance for years.
The story became the opening storyline of Season 7 of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premiered on May 20, 2012, titled “Who’s Your Daddy.” In the episode, Kris flew to Texas to push Khloé toward taking a DNA test. Khloé refused. Her on-camera response, reported by E! Online:
“My dad is Robert Kardashian. I don’t need a DNA test to prove who my father is.”
Several documented facts sit against Jan’s claim:
- Robert Kardashian’s legal filings across his lifetime listed all four children as his biological children
- O.J. Simpson addressed the connected rumours in a December 2022 podcast, stating: “The rumour ain’t true. It’s not even anywhere close to being true.”
- Ellen Pierson filed a defamation lawsuit against the Kardashian family in 2013, a case that produced little public outcome and faded from records by 2014
- Robert died on September 30, 2003, eight weeks after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer, leaving no direct account of his own
No publicly disclosed DNA test involving Robert Kardashian Sr. has ever settled the question.
Jan Ashley’s Death in 2015
After 2012, Jan gave no further public interviews and made no public statements. The complete absence of any media footprint in those final years was consistent with how she had lived most of her life.
She died on October 1, 2015, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was 67. No cause of death was publicly disclosed.
She was survived by a brother, a sister-in-law, and three stepgrandchildren. She had no biological children from either of her marriages.
She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California, beside John Ashley. She died in Tulsa, the same city where she had won a pageant at 17 and met the man she would spend 19 years with. Her burial, in Hollywood Hills rather than Oklahoma, was her final word on where the deeper part of her life had been.
Sources: Wikipedia (Robert Kardashian), IMDB (John Ashley, spouse listing), Variety (John Ashley obituary, October 1997), Turner Classic Movies, ABC News (January 2012), The Washington Post (January 2012), E! Online (KUWTK Season 7 Episode 1 recap, May 2012), Clutchpoints, Nicki Swift, AmoMama (citing Radar Online, 2014).
