If your name doesn't begin with "K", you probably won't get a look-in with the Kardashians, so Kris Humphries, the pro basketball player, whose sister is called Kaela, had a head-start when he began dating Kim. The couple had a whirlwind romance, then a whirlwind marriage which lasted precisely 72 days and hit the wall this week.
News that Kim had filed for divorce prompted unkind speculation that the marriage was a cynical stunt calculated to net the couple millions of dollars and garner stratospheric ratings for the E! Entertainment network, which screens the family's show.
Not so, declared a wounded Kim on Australia's Channel 10, soon after arriving at Sydney airport on Wednesday amid "khaotic" (according to one report) scenes.
She had "married for love", she insisted, then went on to tell Channel Seven's Sunrise programme, in a grammatically challenged sentence: "I think when you know so deep in your heart that you just have to listen to your intuition and follow your heart."
Since their show began airing in 2007, the Kardashians have given new depth, or perhaps new shallowness, to being famous for being famous. Kim told a recent interviewer: "I'm no one. My sisters and I laugh and say, 'Like, who are we?"'
The programme follows the gilded Beverley Hills lives - the mansions, the Bentleys, the designer clothes - of the multiple Ks, who claim to be just an ordinary American family.
It has acquired a huge following, which may help explain the hysterical scenes at Sydney airport, where police bodily picked up photographers and flung them against the wall during efforts to "protect" Kim and Khloe from their adoring fans.
It may also help to explain why grown women were heard screaming when the sisters arrived at a "VIP party" at Hugo's, one of Sydney's hippest nightspots, to launch their handbag line. A sulky-looking Kim glided up and down the black carpet, pausing (at a nudge from her publicist) to grace presenters from one or other of the commercial TV channels with a few words.
Eagle-eyed media and guests noted that her left third finger was devoid of decoration, which fuelled excited speculation about the whereabouts of The Ring.
That would be her US$2 million ($2.5 million), 20.5-carat diamond engagement ring, which Humphries gave her after going down on bended knee and spelling out "Will you marry me?" in rose petals.
The sisters, who made appearances at two Sydney stores on Thursday before flying to Melbourne to cause another media frenzy at the Melbourne Cup Carnival, have reportedly been followed to Australia by Hollywood gossip columnists desperate to report on the fall-out from Kim's divorce.
Humphries declared himself devastated after Kim filed for divorce on Monday. The couple married on August 20 in a celebrity-studded, black-tie ceremony at a Californian canyon estate.
They sold their wedding photos for US$3 million, and reportedly made a further US$15 million from the two-part wedding special on E!.
"God is good!!!!!" Kim - who had described Humphries as her "missing puzzle piece" - tweeted the day after their wedding.
But almost immediately the gossip websites reported trouble in the marriage. Kim was seen out partying alone. She and Kris were seen without their wedding rings. It seemed only a matter of time before the marriage collapsed, although few thought it would come so quickly.
Kim told fans she "had hoped this marriage was forever". But "a source close to Kim and Kris" told the Radar Online entertainment news website that it was "pretty much an arranged marriage from the start".
The source added: "Kim was looking for a husband and Kris was selected for her, among others.
"She wasn't really into him, but she hoped she would be able todevelop some feelings, but it never happened. Kris turned out to be not as malleable as everyone hoped he would be ... [Kim] decided toend it."
Divorce documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court show the couple have a prenuptial agreement, which will dictate how they divide their assets.
CNN talk show host Piers Morgan calculated that, having sold the rights to her wedding for US$17.9 million, Kim made "a nifty US$10,358.80 per hour" during the 72-day marriage. That little nest-egg will surely provide some consolation.
