Jonathan Cheban Is More Than A Longtime Kardashian BFF, Okay?
Last Updated March 7, 2017, 6:40 PM
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Ever wondered what it’s like to be in a celebrity’s inner circle? In our series The Plus One, Arianna Davis offers a peek inside the world of assistants, backup dancers, BFFs, and other right hands to the world’s buzziest celebs. Check out the second installment, here.
Long before Kanye West entered the picture, Jonathan Cheban was the man in Kim Kardashian's life. But in all of my years as a KUWTK viewer and Kardashian follower, I've often wondered: Who is this guy, really?
Chances are — even if you only have the most peripheral interest in America's most controversial family — you've wondered the same thing. The perfectly-coiffed Kardashian BFF seems to be ever-present on the edges of pap pics, and routinely shows up in random scenes of the show. After one afternoon when I fell into the rabbit hole of Cheban's social media accounts (photos of pricey diamond watches worth my student loan debt on Instagram, clips of glamorous jaunts to St. Tropez on Snapchat) I decided to find out what, exactly, Cheban does.
Is he an entrepreneur?! I wondered. Another Scott Disick-like born-rich kid just passing the time with this famous family? Google didn't offer much insight. According to his Wikipedia, Cheban got his start in PR; on Instagram, his bio simply reads "Foodgōd." As I dug further, it became clear that Cheban is also a proprietor of Gossip site The Dishh, as well as the rumored owner of a private school for rich kids. Suffice to say, he's a man who wears a lot of (expensive and fancy) hats.
Ultimately, I decided to go straight to the source and debunk what he actually does on like, a daily basis, with his life. One breezy afternoon in August, I spent the day with the man himself, who brought me along on a day of pre-travel errands while also making sure I understood that he's far from a rich-kid mooching off of his famous friends. And despite his overuse of hyperbolic words and phrases (everything is "insane" and he literally "can't even") somehow after the dizzying day, I walked away from my encounter with Cheban believing him.
Take a walk through our slideshow of a day in Cheban's life and judge for yourself. Warning: It may be hard to... keep up. (Sorry, couldn't resist that one.)
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