This season's second Keeping Up With the Kardashians aired in America last night, giving the family's perspective on events that happened last Autumn, including that time Kanye West announced to the world that he was moving back to Chicago in September. Tabloid sources made it clear at the time that Kim Kardashian wasn't exactly on board. But KUWTK showed the extreme lengths she went to make it clear that she was not down for permanently relocating her family.
In the episode focused on it, Kardashian flew 1,740 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago by private jet to confront West over his announcement, per Daily Mail—an announcement she learned about on social media, not even directly from him. They had two confrontations. During their first, West made it clear he's serious about it.
“We moving to Chicago,” he told her, via People. “That’s the vibe, babe. It feels good.”
“I get that Kanye is really excited about Chicago,” Kardashian said in a confessional. “He just needs a change of scene. I totally respect that, but I can’t really imagine moving to Chicago. I think I’m going to kind of ride it out and see it through, because with him I just always want to make sure that this is what he wants to do. Then we make a real, informed decision.”
During the second confrontation, Kardashian put her foot down. The Chicago move, she said during a confessional, "might be my breaking point.” Ultimately, the two compromised on having a home in Chicago but remaining based in Los Angeles.
Kardashian brought up her concerns with moving their kids Chicago, Saint, and North to a new city: “I don’t want to uproot them from all of their friends and their routine and their cousins and everything. I just think that it would be amazing to have a second place in Chicago and if you need to spend more time out there that’s totally fine, but I think it would be really hard just to take the kids and leave and permanently move to Chicago.”
“When I went to Chicago, I felt like I was home,” West told her. “There were a lot of things that I missed not being there for a long, long, long time. I feel connected, I feel inspired when we’re there.”
“So what do you want to do? Do you want to live in Chicago and I’ll live here and we’ll FaceTime?” Kardashian asked. “I mean, I’m willing to split it, I’m just saying during the school year, it’s going to be really hard.”
Kardashian's points resonated with West, who eventually told her, “We’re not going to move full-time. But we will spend time [there], because that’s my home, too.”
Other West-related moments the show featured include when Kardashian's mother Kris Jenner told Kardashian she needed to try to give West more attention, and Kardashian said she really couldn't:
“I have a million kids. I have a million jobs,” Kardashian said. “This is all I’ve got.”
“I think he just is expecting a lot more than you’re giving,” her mother said.
“I don’t have any much more to give,” Kardashian said.
And when Kardashian told her mom that “I don’t know if they’ll [SNL] invite us back ever" after West's SNL pro-Trump rant after the show. She did say earlier in the episode though that she isn't trying to change West: “I mean, that’s who I fell in love with and I’m not trying to change who is.”
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
