Kris Jenner's mother has died at 91 — MJ Shannon was the whole Kardashian clan's grandmother
Mary Jo 'MJ' Shannon, mother of Kris Jenner and grandmother of Kim, Kourtney and Khloé Kardashian, died on July 16 aged 91. Kris Jenner confirmed the news on Instagram.
America’s most televised family has lost its original matriarch. Mary Jo Shannon, known to millions of viewers simply as MJ, died on Thursday at 91. She was Kris Jenner’s mother and grandmother to Kim, Kourtney, Khloé and Rob Kardashian, and to Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
Kris herself confirmed the news in an Instagram post, saying goodbye to her mother with a heart — in her words — broken into a million pieces. No cause of death was announced.
Who was MJ, the Kardashians’ grandmother?
Born on July 26, 1934, Mary Jo was never a backstage figure: she appeared regularly on Keeping Up with the Kardashians and, more recently, The Kardashians, where her closeness with her daughter and bone-dry one-liners made her a fan favourite. In a family built in front of cameras, MJ was the quiet anchor — the one who treated the empire as the thing it also always was: a family.
Her death comes ten days before her 92nd birthday, and with the family’s television machine running at full tilt — awards season is warming up, with the Emmy nominations just out, and the clan’s reality show still in production.
Five decades of American television changed everything except one thing: at the centre of that noisy family stood a lady from San Diego who never needed a script.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Nicole Alexander / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
