A death certificate reveals that Mary Jo Campbell, the mother of Kris Jenner and grandmother to the Kardashian-Jenner family, died of acute cardiopulmonary arrest after months of living with metastatic lung cancer.
Campbell died on July 16 at a Los Angeles hospital. She was 91. US Weekly obtained the death certificate, which listed acute respiratory failure and metastatic lung cancer as contributing conditions. No autopsy was performed. Campbell was cremated days later.
The certificate showed Campbell had lived with metastatic lung cancer, cancer that had spread beyond the lungs, for months before her death. The family had not previously disclosed the diagnosis publicly. Fox News Radio confirmed the family learned the official cause of death, roughly two weeks after Campbell passed.
Known to the family and to millions of reality television viewers simply as "MJ," Campbell was a fixture on Keeping Up With the Kardashians and a quiet presence behind one of the most visible families in American entertainment. Her death closes a chapter that stretches back decades, long before the cameras, the brands, and the magazine covers.
Kris Jenner announced her mother's death earlier this month in an Instagram post that ran long and personal. She opened simply:
"Today, we said goodbye to my beautiful Mommy MJ."
Jenner credited her mother with shaping everything about how she raised her own children, Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, Rob Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, and Kylie Jenner. She wrote that Campbell taught her "to love your family fiercely, to be kind, to show up for the people you love, and to never take a single moment together for granted."
The tribute carried the weight of a daughter who understood she owed her public identity to a woman who largely stayed out of the spotlight. Jenner wrote:
"There is not a part of me that isn't shaped by you. And if I have done anything right in this world, it's because I spent my life trying to live in a way that would make you proud."
When we first reported Campbell's death, the cause had not yet been made public. The death certificate now fills in that gap.
Kim Kardashian posted her own tribute, calling Campbell "my best friend, my gossip buddy, my forever twin." But the most revealing detail was professional, not sentimental.
Campbell opened a children's clothing boutique called Shannon & Company in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego in 1980. Kim said the store gave her "my very first job" and "taught me lessons about work ethic, strength, and confidence that I've carried with me ever since." Kris Jenner also worked at the boutique as a teenager, People reported.
Campbell herself talked about the store in a 2012 interview with The Daily Beast, recalling how the Kardashian children grew up playing on its floors. She remembered Kim as a child, sitting and counting cash:
"She would sing, 'Counting is the game, and money is my name,' or 'Money is my name and counting is the game.' Something like that."
Campbell said the store kept her grounded. She preferred her own home to spending extended time with the family in Calabasas, the wealthy Los Angeles suburb where the Jenners and Kardashians settled. "I want to keep my little house as my haven," she told The Daily Beast, "because then you have some place to run to."
That independent streak defined her. Campbell pursued a modeling career in her early years. She married three times. Her first marriage, at 18 to a high school sweetheart, lasted roughly two months. She later described it with characteristic bluntness in a 2017 interview on Kim Kardashian's website:
"Once you got married, you realized it. 'What did I do?' And you try to stay in there for a month or so and really try hard and you just can't. You think, 'I shouldn't waste his time.'"
Campbell's second marriage, to Robert Houghton, produced two daughters, Kris and Karen. The couple split when Kris was seven. Campbell later married Harry Shannon, and that union lasted 40 years until Shannon's death in 2003. Kim Kardashian referred to him as "Papa Harry" in her tribute.
Before the lung cancer that ultimately contributed to her death, Campbell had survived two previous cancer battles, breast cancer and colon cancer. The dates of those diagnoses were not disclosed publicly. She beat both.
In recent years, Campbell remained close to the family and continued to appear in their public lives. In 2018, she posed in a photo shoot for Kim Kardashian's beauty brand, KKW Beauty. She competed on Celebrity Family Feud. And in 2022, at age 87, she served as one of only two witnesses when Kourtney Kardashian married musician Travis Barker at a Santa Barbara courthouse. The moment was documented in the Hulu special Til Death Do Us Part Kourtney & Travis.
Kim Kardashian's tribute included a lighter touch, noting her grandmother's comfort with social media: "I know you are up in heaven, looking at all of our Instagram posts of you from your sneaky finsta account you would always use lol." The image of a 91-year-old woman running a secret Instagram account to keep tabs on her famous grandchildren says more about Campbell than any obituary summary could.
Campbell's final years were marked by loss beyond her own declining health. Her younger daughter, Karen Houghton, Kris Jenner's sister, died in 2024. Houghton's death certificate listed cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac arrhythmia as the cause, with Type 2 diabetes as a secondary underlying condition. The death was described as unexpected. No parent should have to bury a child, and Campbell endured that before facing her own diagnosis.
The Kardashian-Jenner family has now lost several figures in relatively quick succession. Cancer has claimed lives across public life in recent months, and Campbell's case, months of metastatic lung cancer before cardiopulmonary arrest, follows a pattern familiar to many American families who watch the disease take hold gradually.
Kim Kardashian closed her tribute by asking her grandmother to "give Papa Harry, Aunt Karen, and my dad a hug for me." The mention of Robert Kardashian, Kim's late father, placed Campbell's death in a longer arc of family grief that stretches back years.
In an era when death certificates and official cause-of-death determinations increasingly become public news events, the Campbell family's experience is straightforward: a 91-year-old woman who had fought cancer twice before was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer months ago, and her body gave out on July 16 in a Los Angeles hospital.
The details on the certificate, acute cardiopulmonary arrest, acute respiratory failure, metastatic lung cancer, are clinical. The tributes from her daughter and granddaughter are not. Together, they sketch a woman who built a small business, raised a family that became a global brand, survived more than most people face, and kept her own house as a haven until the end.
Other notable figures in entertainment have also passed in recent weeks, including singer Lauren Bennett, a reminder that death does not wait for convenient timing or old age.
Mary Jo Campbell lived 91 years, married three times, beat cancer twice, built a business, and raised a daughter who built an empire. She earned her rest.