How Travis Barker Described Kim Kardashian Relationship Before Kourtney Marriage

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.)

Deal of the Day

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:

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She’s Hot

In his book, the “Can a Drummer Get Some” artist detailed an Amsterdam trip with the Simple Life star and Kim, who he referred to as “Paris’ closet girl.”

He wrote, “We all checked into our hotel and then rented bicycles and rode all over Amsterdam — that’s what you do there. It was me, Lil Chris, my drum tech Daniel, Paris, and Kim. We all got high as a kite at a coffee shop. Then we rode over to the Absinthe Bar, and then the red-light district. … I was having a blast and was happy to let the world know it. I kept on secretly checking out Kim, telling Lil Chris, ‘I don’t care if she’s the closet girl, she’s f–king hot.'”

In 2015, the musician exclusively told Us about the attraction. “How could you not stare at Kim? Mind you, I enjoyed hanging out with Paris, but I love curvy girls,” he said at the time. “Kim was eye candy. I was in no way disrespectful to Paris, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Kim.”

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Staying in Touch

The Transplants member explained that after he broke up with Hilton — and briefly reunited and split again from Moakler — he “started talking” to the Skims founder shortly after her sex tape with Ray J was released in 2007.

“We had stayed in touch after Amsterdam, and she did some modeling for Famous. I hired Estevan Oriol to shoot a whole ad campaign of her in bathing suits. Kim’s tape had come out and she had broken up with Ray J,” he wrote in his book. “We went to dinner, we went to lunch. You might think I would be doing the worst things with this girl because of her tapes, but it was the exact opposite of any other encounter I’ve had with a woman: with Kim, I wanted to be nothing but a gentleman to her. It was so weird. We were around each other a lot. We used her in ad campaigns for Famous. She came to my house and went swimming. We watched the Fourth of July fireworks together. I’d go visit her and her family at their clothing store. We’d be really sweet around each other, like little kids, and then when we were apart, she’d call me and say, ‘I want to see you again.’ ‘Me too,’ I’d say.”

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A Reunion With Shanna

Barker revealed that he reunited with his ex-wife one more time but “really wanted to see Kim.” This ultimately led to a run-in.

“Shanna caught wind of what was going on. She poured a drink on Kim at a party thrown by Carmen Electra. I felt terrible,” he claimed in his book. “Kim and I never touched each other. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

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No Awkwardness

“I had a crush on her and we were flirtatious but nothing ever happened. She was so kind and polite, I just felt like being a perfect gentleman around her. It was a trip,” he told Us in 2015. “When I see her, I give her a hug and wish her the best and there’s no awkwardness. Because God knows, when you hook up, s–t gets awkward!”

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It’s ‘Ridiculous’

“[Kourtney] knows we used to talk. Nothing bad was going on,” he told the Los Angeles Times in October 2023. “You give people a little information and they think they’ve solved the mystery of ‘this is why they’re fighting.’ It’s just so ridiculous.”

Kim and Kourtney had been feuding in episodes of The Kardashians, with Kourtney claiming her sister’s Dolce & Gabbana collection copied her Italian wedding to Barker. (D&G notably dressed the wedding party and the designers hosted the ceremony at their villa.)

Three months later, Moakler doubled down on her accusations that Barker and Kim had plans to hook up. “They were trying to meet up at her sister’s house to f–k,” she claimed on the “Dumb Blonde” podcast, claiming she saw texts on her then-husband’s phone.

Moakler then allegedly called Kim, who denied the affair by stating, “I don’t like white guys.”

Moakler added, “Travis and I never really recovered from that. I felt stupid.”