Jan Ashley, born Janice Lynn Glass, was an Oklahoma beauty-pageant titleholder and corporate executive secretary who later became known as Robert Kardashian Sr.’s second wife. Long before that short marriage, she was Miss Tulsa in 1966, worked for Phillips Petroleum, and spent nearly two decades married to actor and producer John Ashley. She died on October 1, 2015, at age 67.
Much of what appears online about Ashley comes from recycled celebrity biographies. The surviving record is more precise—and in several places contradicts commonly repeated claims, including the idea that her marriage to Kardashian can simply be described as a legally completed “30-day marriage.”
Identification note: This article concerns Janice Lynn Glass Ashley (1948–2015), the woman who married Robert Kardashian in 1998. “Jan Ashley” is not a unique name.
Jan Ashley at a glance
| Fact | Documented information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Janice Lynn Glass Ashley |
| Birth | August 1948, Amarillo, Texas |
| Raised in | Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| School | Will Rogers High School, Tulsa |
| Pageant title | Miss Tulsa, 1966 |
| Known employment | Executive secretary to K. S. “Boots” Adams of Phillips Petroleum |
| Husband | John Ashley, married in 1978; he died in 1997 |
| Marriage to Robert Kardashian | November 25, 1998 |
| Outcome | Kardashian sought a nullity; the marriage was annulled in 1999 |
| Children | Robert Kardashian’s 1999 declaration stated that Ashley had no children when they married |
| Death | October 1, 2015, age 67 |
| Burial | Her obituary said she would be interred beside John Ashley at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California |
The biographical details above are supported primarily by Ashley’s funeral-home obituary, the historical Miss Oklahoma contestant archive and Robert Kardashian’s signed 1999 declaration.
Her birth date is less certain than many biographies suggest
Ashley was born in Amarillo, Texas, in August 1948, but even the strongest available biographical source contains an internal discrepancy about the exact day.
The Floral Haven Funeral Home page gives August 3, 1948 in its record header, while the obituary text on the same page says August 1, 1948. Both agree on the month, year and Amarillo birthplace. For that reason, presenting August 3 as unquestionably established—as many online biographies do—overstates what the underlying record actually shows.
Her obituary says her parents moved to Tulsa when she was seven and that she later graduated from Will Rogers High School.
Janice Lynn Glass was Miss Tulsa in 1966
Ashley had a documented public identity more than three decades before her Kardashian marriage. Her obituary says she became Miss Tulsa in 1966, and a historical list of that year’s Miss Oklahoma contestants independently identifies “Miss Tulsa Janice Lynn Glass.”
The same contestant archive records Jane Anne Jayroe as the 1966 state winner; Jayroe subsequently became Miss America 1967. Ashley’s listing therefore provides useful independent corroboration not dependent on later Kardashian-related reporting.
There is no similarly strong evidence that Ashley pursued a major national modeling or entertainment career afterward. Describing her specifically as a former Miss Tulsa titleholder is more accurate than broadly labeling her a professional model or career beauty queen.
She worked for one of Phillips Petroleum’s most important executives
Ashley’s obituary also records that she worked as executive secretary to K. S. “Boots” Adams at Phillips Petroleum.
That was a significant corporate office. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame records that Kenneth Stanley “Boots” Adams became president of Phillips Petroleum in 1938 at age 38 and later served as chairman until his 1968 retirement.
This part of Ashley’s biography is frequently lost in profiles that begin her story with Robert Kardashian. Her documented employment and pageant history both predate her connections to the Kardashian family.
Her marriage to John Ashley lasted far longer than her Kardashian marriage
Ashley married actor and producer John Ashley in 1978, according to her obituary, after which the couple moved to California. They remained married until John’s death in New York in 1997 while he was working on a film.
John Ashley had begun as an actor, appearing in American International Pictures productions and beach movies, before moving heavily into production work. His later television credits included The A-Team and other series.
Jan’s obituary refers to John as her “loving husband” and says that, after her own death, she was to be interred beside him at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California.
This 1978–1997 marriage is an important corrective to the way Ashley is often presented solely as a Kardashian ex-wife: her relationship with John Ashley occupied roughly 19 years of her adult life.
How Jan Ashley met Robert Kardashian
Ashley later gave her own account of meeting Robert Kardashian in a 2014 interview. She said she was selling her home after John Ashley’s death when Kardashian saw her photograph and arranged an introduction through actor Mike Connors. She said they dated for about seven months before Kardashian proposed in Hawaii.
Those details are recollections given many years afterward and should be treated as Ashley’s account rather than independently established facts.
The wedding date itself is on firmer ground. In a signed legal declaration, Robert Kardashian stated that he and Ashley married on November 25, 1998.
People also identifies Ashley as Kardashian’s second wife, between his marriages to Kris Jenner and Ellen Pearson, and places their marriage in 1998.
Was Jan Ashley really married to Robert Kardashian for only 30 days?
The often-repeated “30-day marriage” requires qualification.
Ashley herself said in her 2014 interview that she had been married to Kardashian “for a month,” and RadarOnline consequently described the union as lasting 30 days. That same article, however, incorrectly places the wedding in 1999 even though Kardashian’s own declaration gives the exact date as November 25, 1998.
More importantly, Kardashian’s sworn declaration complicates any claim that the entire legal marriage was over exactly 30 days after the wedding. He wrote that approximately two months after the marriage he changed his mind about having another child. The declaration itself was signed on May 13, 1999 as part of his request for a nullity.
E! News, reporting on the annulment documents in 2012, described Kardashian as petitioning to annul the marriage after five months, while People more conservatively says the couple annulled their marriage within a year.
The most defensible summary is therefore:
Ashley and Kardashian’s relationship as a married couple broke down very quickly, and Ashley later characterized it as a one-month marriage, but the legal annulment process extended into 1999.
That distinction is more accurate than treating “30 days” as the documented duration from wedding to completed annulment.
Why did Jan Ashley and Robert Kardashian annul their marriage?
The strongest contemporaneous evidence comes from Kardashian himself.
In his May 1999 declaration, Kardashian said he and Ashley had agreed before marrying that they would have a child together because Ashley had no children. He stated that about two months after marrying he changed his mind, explaining that he already had four biological children and did not want any more. He explicitly said that he was the person who changed his mind.
Ashley later disputed that explanation. In 2014, she said the child issue was not the reason the marriage failed and instead described tension surrounding Kardashian’s existing family relationships as a major factor.
These accounts cannot be cleanly reconciled. The appropriate conclusion is not to choose one recollection and present it as settled history: Kardashian’s sworn filing documented one reason relevant to his nullity request, while Ashley later offered a substantially different explanation for why the relationship collapsed.
Did Jan Ashley have children?
Robert Kardashian’s 1999 declaration provides unusually direct evidence on this question. He wrote that Ashley “had no children” when they agreed before marriage to try to have a child together.
Her 2015 obituary identifies her parents, brother, sister-in-law and three nephews but does not identify any children of her own.
Accordingly, there is strong evidence that she had no children when she married Kardashian and no reliable public record reviewed for this article establishes that she later became a parent.
What Jan Ashley actually said about Khloé Kardashian
Ashley returned to national entertainment coverage in January 2012 after she and Robert Kardashian’s later wife Ellen made claims to Star magazine concerning Khloé Kardashian’s paternity.
Ashley was quoted as alleging that Robert Kardashian had told her after their marriage that Khloé was not his biological daughter. ABC News documented the claim and Kris Jenner’s immediate rejection of it; CBS Los Angeles also reported Khloé Kardashian’s public response.
The allegation should not be reported as an established fact.
Most significantly, Kardashian’s own 1999 declaration points in the opposite direction. While explaining why he no longer wanted another child, he wrote under penalty of perjury that he already had “four biological children.”
Contemporary entertainment reports highlighted the contradiction after Ashley’s allegation emerged in 2012.
The declaration is evidence of what Robert Kardashian himself formally represented to a court. It is not, by itself, a DNA test, but it means Ashley’s later account conflicts with a contemporaneous sworn statement by the person she said had made the alleged disclosure.
For that reason, the responsible description is simple: Ashley made the allegation; the Kardashian family rejected it; and Robert Kardashian’s own 1999 sworn declaration said he had four biological children.
What happened to Jan Ashley later?
Ashley’s funeral-home obituary says she eventually returned to Oklahoma in 2012. She died on October 1, 2015, aged 67. The family planned a private service, and the obituary stated that she would be interred next to John Ashley at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California.
This record also resolves a problem in some newer celebrity profiles that discuss Ashley as though her present whereabouts are unknown. Her death has been publicly documented by the funeral home responsible for her arrangements since 2015.
What is actually established about Jan Ashley?
The best-supported picture of Jan Ashley is narrower—and more substantive—than many celebrity biographies suggest.
She was Janice Lynn Glass, an Amarillo-born woman raised in Tulsa who represented Tulsa in the 1966 Miss Oklahoma competition, worked as an executive secretary at Phillips Petroleum, and married John Ashley in 1978. After his death in 1997, she married Robert Kardashian on November 25, 1998. That marriage quickly failed and was annulled the following year.
Her later comments about the Kardashian family generated far more press than most of her own life did. Those comments are best understood alongside—not instead of—the contemporary records. In particular, the 1999 annulment declaration provides a check on two of the most repeated claims surrounding her: exactly how quickly the marriage ended and what Robert Kardashian himself said about his children.
There is no credible basis in the sources reviewed here for assigning Ashley a speculative net worth, invented career history, precise physical measurements, or other personal details commonly reproduced on low-quality biography sites.
Sources
The strongest sources used for this profile are the Floral Haven Funeral Home obituary for Janice Lynn Ashley, which documents her early life, employment, marriage to John Ashley, later years and death; the 1999 signed declaration of Robert Kardashian, which establishes the November 25, 1998 wedding date and his account of the annulment dispute; the Miss Oklahoma historical contestant archive, which lists Janice Lynn Glass as Miss Tulsa in 1966; and contemporaneous coverage from ABC News, E! News and People for the later Kardashian-related claims and context.
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