Travis Barker has been married to Kourtney Kardashian since 2022, but she wasn’t the first member of the family he was close with.
More than a decade earlier, Barker bonded with her sister Kim Kardashian when he was dating Paris Hilton. (Kim worked as Hilton’s assistant at the time.)
“She wanted to do a reality show because she thought her family was interesting, and obviously she was right,” Barker wrote in his 2015 memoir, Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums. “I respected her hustle. She was meeting with Ryan Seacrest, and she wanted to know what doing a show was like.”
Barker, who had filmed Meet the Barkers with ex-wife Shanna Moakler in 2005, gave her advice before Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered in 2007. “‘It’s hectic,’ I told her, ‘You have no privacy. It’s not just you and your family in the house. It’s really personal, and it can be really f–ked up,’” he wrote.
While Barker and Kim had a flirty relationship, nothing physical ever happened — unless you ask Moakler. (Barker and Moakler were married between 2004 and 2008 and share son Landon and daughter Alabama.)
Barker and Kourtney eventually sparked a bond of their own due to their kids’ close friendships and neighboring homes. (The Lemme founder, for her part, shares three kids with ex Scott Disick.) Their connection turned romantic in 2020 and they got married in May 2022. Barker and Kourtney’s first baby together, son Rocky Thirteen, was born in November 2023.
Scroll down for everything Barker said about Kim through the years: