It’s been years since Lamar Odom and Khloé Kardashian’s whirlwind marriage, but a new documentary is sharing a raw, in-depth look at how it all started and what went wrong.
© WireImageKhoe and Lamar got married after only a month of dating
In Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom, Odom gets candid about what initially drew him to Khloé, and it wasn’t just love at first sight. It was the lifestyle, the access, and the future he thought he could build by stepping into her world. “I’m watching how she lives and their lifestyle,” he says in the doc. “I’m like, ‘This is how I want to live.’”
Mixing their star power became something he said he wasn’t ready to handle. “I think that was like a power trip for me, ‘cause you took the power I had [as an NBA player], and then Kardashian power. When you add ‘em…” he said, adding, “But I wasn’t really ready for all that power.”
And according to people closest to him, that mindset wasn’t exactly a secret. His longtime friend Anthony “Pumpkin” Booker recalls Odom being very aware of what being tied to the Kardashian family could mean. As Booker puts it, Odom saw the relationship as a move to “better his future.”
© Dimitrios KambourisCaitlyn Jenner, Kris Jenner, Lamar Odom, Khloe Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kourtney Kardashian
Even his daughter, Destiny, acknowledged both sides of it. “He did love Khloé,” she says in the documentary, “but he had wanted to be on reality TV for a long time.”
The couple went from 0-100, dating for a month before marrying in 2009. While the Kardashian family was no stranger to moving fast, with Kim Kardashian infamously marrying Kris Humphries in a televised ceremony in 2011, only to divorce him 72 hours later, Odom’s family felt left in the dark.
© GettyLamar admitted he was drawn to the Kardashian lifestyle
His kids and ex, Liza Morales, reveal they were largely left out of the moment entirely, some finding out about the wedding last-minute, others not even meeting Khloé beforehand.
While Odom claimed, “My baby’s mother (Liza Morales) didn’t let [my children] come to my wedding.” But his daughter LJ admitted, “I never even met her. I don’t think he told me he was marrying her. “I just didn’t wanna be a show pony or anything like that,” Destiny said. “If you wanna get married in front of, like, a hundred people and all these cameras, that’s totally cool, and it’s on you.”
Morales added, “I really thought he was joking.”
Of course, the marriage ended in one of the wildest ways when Odom overdosed in a Las Vegas brothel and almost died. “I have dealt with so much trauma in this relationship. For years, this was the love of my life. To learn how to unlove someone, to have to go through all that, it’s almost like a death,” Kardashian explained in a February 2025 episode of The Kardashians, where they reunited.
© GettyTheir relationship ended after her almost died in a brothel
“I had to break contact with him because Lamar was repeating some of the same behaviors that I just couldn’t stand. I had to learn the hard way that I can’t save anyone in that position. I almost lost myself—and I probably did at some points—trying to save him,” she continued.
And yet, despite all of that, the emotional connection between Odom and Khloé still lingers. After the episode aired, Khloé herself reflected on their relationship on social media.
“Why was this reunion so hard to watch?” a fan wrote on TikTok. “You can tell he still loves her and regrets not having a family with her. This is the literal proof of the right person, wrong time.” Khloé agreed in the comments, calling it the classic case of “right person, wrong time.”