Watch: Karlie Kloss Addresses Her, Husband Josh Kushner’s Ties to Trump Family
When Karlie Kloss fell for Josh Kushner in 2012, the 6-foot-2 supermodel still had some growing up to do.
But as it turned out, she couldn’t have met a better partner than the Thrive Capital founder to invest in.
“I absolutely met, married and am madly in love with my soulmate,” Kloss, who wed Kushner in 2018, said on a 2020 episode of InCharge With DVF. “He is truly my partner. He is my partner in life. He is my best friend.
And since she was only 19 when they met, “I think there’s a lot of growing into myself that I still was doing when I first met him and still am to this day.”
Since then, everything about their partnership has expanded, from their family world as parents of sons Levi Joseph, 5, and Elijah Jude, 3, and 11-month-old daughter Rae Florence, to their sprawling business portfolio—which now includes the Los Angeles Lakers, Kushner having teamed with former Disney CEO Bob Iger to lead a $12.5 billion purchase of the storied NBA franchise.
Neither St. Louis-proud Kloss nor New Jersey native Kushner—who will have to sell the piece of the Miami Heat he currently owns—have frequented the celeb-filled sidelines at Lakers games yet, but they are big basketball fans.
And, incidentally, their real estate holdings already include a waterfront mansion in nearby Malibu along with their Manhattan penthouse and Miami Beach estate.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
But though the couple’s public profile is only growing—Kushner’s real-time net worth on Aug. 12 was $5.2 billion, according to Forbes—they take pains to keep it a silhouette.
“My mom always told me the goal of life was to be happy to go to work,” Kushner told Fortune in 2023 in the rarest of mentions of his private world, “and be happy to come home.” (Yet while he’s a man of few words, his Instagram could be mistaken for a Kloss appreciation account.)
And Kloss, who shields her kids’ faces on Instagram, fondly remembers how “social media was not a thing” when she started modeling in 2007.
As she recalled on the July 30 episode of The World’s First Podcast With Erin & Sara Foster, “Nobody cared what models thought—or barely what their names were, much less what their thoughts on the world were. I came into the industry at a time where I got to be a silent movie star, and I loved that.”
Now, the 34-year-old continued, “I really value my private real life. I also think that the enormous amount of attention all at once sort of overwhelmed me and gave me PTSD from actually letting people in. And I think, because of that, people don’t feel like they really know me.”
And while she doesn’t worry too hard about being misunderstood, she admittedly doesn’t want “to be judged for things” she has nothing to do with, noting, “That is the only thing that’s been frustrating.”
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
But, she added,”I made a personal choice a long time ago that I was just going to live my real life and sort of not give a s–t what anybody thinks about it.”
That included her decision to convert to Judaism before swapping vows with Kushner in upstate New York on Oct. 18, 2018, wearing custom Dior for the occasion.
“Changing part of who you are for someone else can be seen as weak,” Kloss told British Vogue in 2019. “But you know what? Actually, if you’ve been through what I’ve experienced, it requires you to be anything but weak. It requires me to be stronger and self-loving and resilient. I really did not take this lightly.”
In fact, she said on The World’s First Podcast, she had “six-plus years of a lot of soul searching” before she took the plunge.
She admittedly misses Christmas—”a little hard, I won’t lie”—but has leaned into Thanksgiving, with its “family and food and football…and there’s no stress of gifts.” And she has embraced observing Jewish holidays, including weekly Shabbat—which means she turns her phone off and doesn’t work or travel on Saturdays.
Religion aside, Kloss explained, “It’s a framework of how to live a life around family values and education, and prioritizing.”
Karlie Kloss/Instagram
But every other day, she’s hustling. In addition to her still-thriving modeling career, Kloss’ Bedford Media—cofounded with Kushner—acquired i–D magazine in 2023 and plans to relaunch historic LIFE magazine after purchasing the publishing rights in 2024.
Kushner “loves me but he’s the most supportive person in my life,” Kloss said on InCharge With DVF of expanding her off-the-runway horizons with her husband’s encouragement. “He wants me to chase my dreams. He helped me dream bigger.”
Marking her 34th birthday Aug. 3, she stopped to count her blessings, captioning a carousel of pics featuring her three kids (who brought her breakfast in bed, presumably with an assist from their dad), “Feeling so incredibly grateful. For my family. For my friends. For my health. For meaningful work. And for all the love that surrounds me every single day. My heart is so full.”
Keep reading as we serve up more sweet pics:
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Instagram / Derek Blasberg
Madison McGaw, Angela Pham, & Joe Schildhorn/BFA.com
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