Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner on October 28, 1949, in Mount Kisco, New York. She was known as Bruce Jenner until June 2015. Her parents are Esther Ruth (née McGuire) and William Hugh Jenner, who was an arborist. She is of English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, and Welsh descent. Her younger brother, Burt, was killed in a car accident in Canton, Connecticut, on November 30, 1976, shortly after Jenner’s success at the Olympic Games. As a young child, Jenner was diagnosed with dyslexia.

Jenner attended Sleepy Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow, New York, for her freshman and sophomore years and Newtown High School in Newtown, Connecticut, for her junior and senior years, graduating in 1968. Jenner earned a football scholarship and attended Graceland College (now Graceland University) in Lamoni, Iowa, but was forced to stop playing football because of a knee injury. Recognizing Jenner’s potential, Graceland track coach L. D. Weldon encouraged Jenner to switch to the decathlon. Jenner debuted as a decathlete in 1970 in the Drake Relays decathlon in Des Moines, Iowa, finishing in fifth place. Jenner graduated from Graceland College in 1973 with a degree in physical education.

At the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, Jenner was in fifth place in the men’s decathlon, behind Steve Gough and Andrew Pettes, with only the last event remaining. Needing to make up a 19-second gap on Gough in the men’s 1500 metres, Jenner qualified for the Olympic team by running a fast final lap, finishing 22 seconds ahead of the other runners. This prompted the Eugene Register-Guard to ask: “Who’s Jenner?” Following the Olympic Trials, Jenner finished in tenth place in the decathlon at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. By watching Soviet Mykola Avilov win the event, Jenner was inspired to start an intense training regimen. “For the first time, I knew what I wanted out of life and that was it, and this guy has it. I literally started training that night at midnight, running through the streets of Munich, Germany, training for the Games. I trained that day on through the 1976 Games, 6–8 hours a day, every day, 365 days a year.”

In the 1970s, Olympic athletes were considered to be amateurs and were not allowed to seek or accept payment for their positions as sports celebrities. During the Cold War in 1972, three major Olympic titles that had a long history of American success – basketball, the 100 meter dash, and decathlon – were won by Soviet athletes. All Soviet athletes were professionals, while the United States was limited to amateurs. Jenner became an American hero by returning the decathlon title to the United States. “After the Games were over,” Jenner said, “I happened to be the right guy, at that right place, at that right time.” Tony Kornheiser of The New York Times wrote: “Jenner is twirling the nation like a baton. He and wife, Chrystie, are so high up on the pedestal of American heroism, it would take a crane to get them down.”

Of the 13 decathlons Jenner competed in between 1973 and 1976, the only loss was at the 1975 AAU National Championships, when a “no height” in the pole vault marred the score.

Jenner was the American champion in the men’s decathlon event in 1974, and was featured on the cover of Track & Field News magazine’s August 1974 issue. While on tour in 1975, Jenner won the French national championship, and a gold medal at the 1975 Pan American Games, earning the tournament record with 8,045 points. This was followed by new world records of 8,524 points at the U.S.A./U.S.S.R./Poland triangular meet in Eugene, Oregon on August 9–10, 1975, breaking Avilov’s record, and 8,538 points at the 1976 Olympic trials, also in Eugene. The record in Eugene was a hybrid score because a timing system failure and wind aided marks. Still, Jenner was proud of “A nice little workout, huh?”

At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Jenner achieved five personal bests on the first day of the men’s decathlon – a “home run” – despite being in second place behind Guido Kratschmer of West Germany. Jenner was confident: “The second day has all my good events. If everything works out all right, we should be ahead after it’s all over.” Following a rainstorm on the second day, Jenner watched teammate Fred Dixon get injured in the 110 meter hurdles, so took a cautious approach to the hurdles and discus, then had personal bests in the pole vault, when Jenner took the lead, and javelin. By that point, victory was virtually assured, but it remained to be seen by how much Jenner would improve the record. In the final event—the 1500 meters, which was seen live on national television—Jenner looked content to finish the long competition. Jenner sprinted the last lap, making up a 50-meter deficit and nearly catching the event favorite, Soviet Leonid Litvinenko, who was already well out of contention for the gold medal, but whose personal best had been eight seconds better than Jenner’s personal best before the race. Jenner set a new personal best time and won the gold medal with a world-record score of 8,618 points.

As a result of winning the Olympic decathlon, Jenner became a national hero and received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States and was also named the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1976.

Jenner’s 1976 world and Olympic record was broken by four points by Daley Thompson at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow; Thompson’s victory was perhaps tainted by the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though the top American at the time, Bobby Coffman, was not expected to push Thompson or challenge Jenner’s record. In 1985, Jenner’s Olympic decathlon score was reevaluated against the IAAF’s updated decathlon scoring table and was reported as 8,634 for comparative purposes. This converted mark stood as the American record until 1991, when it was surpassed by eventual gold medalist, and world record holder, Dan O’Brien of Dan & Dave fame. As of 2018, Jenner was ranked twenty-sixth on the world all-time list and ninth on the American all-time list.

In 1977, Jenner became a spokesperson for Wheaties brand breakfast cereal and appeared in a photograph on the cover of the cereal box. After taking over from Olympic champion Bob Richards, Jenner was second in a succession of athletes featured as spokespersons for the brand. Mary Lou Retton succeeded Jenner in 1984.

On November 22, 1977, Jenner went to San Francisco to refute charges filed by San Francisco district attorney Joseph Freitas that General Mills—the maker of Wheaties—had engaged in deceptive advertising in its campaign that featured Jenner. Jenner liked Wheaties and ate the breakfast cereal two or three times a week, which supported the advertising campaign’s claims. Two days later, Freitas withdrew the suit, saying that it was “a case of overzealousness” on the part of his staff.

Jenner began television appearances in the mid-1970s, both as herself and in character roles. One of Jenner’s first recurring television roles was as a co-host of the short-lived daytime talk and variety series America Alive! in 1978. The comedy Can’t Stop the Music (1980) was Jenner’s first film appearance. She starred in the made-for-TV movies The Golden Moment: An Olympic Love Story (1980) and Grambling’s White Tiger (1981). During the 1981–1982 season, Jenner became a semi-regular cast member in the police series CHiPs, guest-starring as Officer Steve McLeish for six episodes, substituting for star Erik Estrada, who was locked in a contract dispute with NBC and MGM. Jenner also appeared in an episode of the sitcom Silver Spoons called “Trouble with Words”, wherein her personal issues with dyslexia were revealed in a storyline about a recurring teenage character with the same problem.

Jenner was inducted into the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1980, the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1986, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and the Connecticut Sports Hall of Fame in 1994, and the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame in 2010. For almost 20 years, San Jose City College hosted an annual Bruce Jenner Invitational competition.

On January 5, 1981, Jenner married actress Linda Thompson in Hawaii. They have two sons together, Brandon Jenner and Sam Brody Jenner (known as Brody). By February 1986, Jenner and Thompson had separated and subsequently divorced. Their sons later starred on the reality show The Princes of Malibu, and Brody appeared in the reality show The Hills.

Jenner had a short career as a race car driver in the IMSA Camel GT series (International Motor Sports Association) in the 1980s. Jenner’s first victory came in the 1986 12 hours of Sebring in the IMSA GTO class driving the 7-Eleven Roush Racing Ford Mustang with co-driver Scott Pruett. The pair won their class and finished 4th overall in the 12-hour endurance race. 1986 was also the most successful year of Jenner’s career, finishing second in the championship to Pruett. Jenner commented, “I was a lot more badass runner than I was a driver.”

Jenner appeared in the series Learn to Read and in the video games Olympic Decathlon (1981) and Bruce Jenner’s World Class Decathlon (1996). The “hero shot”, the finish of the final event of the 1976 Olympic decathlon, and the Wheaties cover, were parodied by John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, endorsing “Little Chocolate Donuts”. In 1989, Jenner played herself in the comedy short Dirty Tennis written by James Van Patten.

On April 21, 1991, Jenner married Kris Kardashian (née Houghton) after five months of dating. They have two daughters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner. While married, Jenner was also the step-parent to Kris’s children from her previous marriage – Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Robert – who star in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The couple separated in June 2013, but the separation was not publicly announced until four months later, in October. Kris filed for divorce in September 2014, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce terms were finalized in December 2014 and went into effect on March 23, 2015, as mandated by a state legal requirement for a six-months delay after the filing.

Chris Mandle of The Independent stated: “Jenner has gone on to inspire countless men and women, but her comments, which were made after she was celebrated at Glamour magazine’s Women Of The Year in New York were branded ‘offensive and insulting’.” He added: “People began tweeting the other, harder things women have to deal with, such as institutionalized oppression, abuse and sexual assault”. James Smith, husband of Moira Smith, the only female New York Police Department officer to die on September 11, 2001, returned Moira’s “Woman of the Year” award, given posthumously. Referring to Jenner as a man, he stated that he found Glamour giving Jenner the same award insulting to Moira’s memory, and referred to the matter as a publicity stunt. Smith later said that, having supported transgender youth and Glamour’s decision to honor transgender actress Laverne Cox in 2014, he did not object because Jenner is transgender; he objected to Jenner’s “hardest part about being a woman” commentary; this proved to him that Jenner “is not truly a woman. I believe this comment and others he has made trivializes the transgender experience as I have witnessed it.”

In January 2002, Jenner participated in an episode of the American series The Weakest Link, featuring Olympic athletes. In February and March 2003, Jenner was part of the cast of the American series I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!. She made a cameo appearance in a season-three episode of The Apprentice, which aired in May 2005. She also partnered with Tai Babilonia for Skating with Celebrities in a series that aired January – March 2006 (they were eliminated during the fifth of seven episodes), served as a guest judge on Pet Star on Animal Planet. In November 2010, a photograph of Jenner was shown in a janitor’s resume in an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Since late 2007, Jenner has starred in the E! reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians along with wife Kris Jenner, stepchildren Kourtney, Kimberley, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian (from Kris’s marriage to attorney Robert Kardashian), and daughters Kylie and Kendall.

Additional television and talk show appearances by Jenner include: Nickelodeon’s made-for-TV film Gym Teacher: The Movie as well as episodes of Murder, She Wrote, the Lingo Olympic Winners episode, and talk shows such as Hannity and season 1, episode 21 of The Bonnie Hunt Show in 2008.

In 2011, Jenner appeared in the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill in a scene with Al Pacino as an actor in a play. Like Can’t Stop the Music, the film won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture and swept every Razzie category.

When Jenner came out as a trans woman in 2015, General Mills stated that: “Bruce Jenner continues to be a respected member of Team Wheaties.” After a negative response to this initial statement, Mike Siemienas, General Mills’s brand media relations manager, clarified it by saying: “Bruce Jenner has been a respected member of Team Wheaties, and Caitlyn Jenner will continue to be.”

In February 2015, Jenner was involved in a fatal multiple-vehicle collision on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California. Kim Howe, an animal rights activist and actress, was killed when Jenner’s SUV ran into Howe’s car. Accounts of the sequence of collisions have varied, as have the number of people injured. Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges, but three civil lawsuits were filed against Jenner by Howe’s stepchildren and drivers of other cars involved in the collision. Jessica Steindorff, a Hollywood agent who was hit by Howe’s car, settled her case in December 2015. Howe’s stepchildren settled their case in January 2016. Financial details were not disclosed in either case.

In a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer in April 2015, Jenner came out as a trans woman, saying that she had dealt with gender dysphoria since her youth and that, “for all intents and purposes, I’m a woman.” Jenner cross-dressed for many years and took hormone replacement therapy but stopped after her romance with Kris Kardashian became more serious, leading to marriage in 1991. Jenner recounts having permission to explore her gender identity on her own travels but not when they were coupled, and that not knowing the best way to talk about the many issues contributed to the deterioration of the 23-year-long marriage, which ended formally in 2015.

In 2015, Jenner said that she has never been sexually attracted to men, but always to women, and that, keeping in mind the difficulty people have understanding the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, she would identify as asexual for the time being. Jenner underwent cosmetic surgery, and ultimately completed sex reassignment surgery in January 2017.

In June 2015, Jenner debuted her new name and image, and began publicly using feminine pronoun self-descriptors. Jenner held a renaming ceremony in July 2015, adopting the name Caitlyn Marie Jenner. Prior to her 20/20 interview, a two-part special titled Keeping Up with the Kardashians: About Bruce was filmed with the family in which she answered questions, and prepared her children for the personal and public aspects of the transition. In the special, which aired in May 2015, the point was emphasized that there is no one right way to transition. Jenner made it a priority to ensure that all her children were independent first before focusing on her transition. In September 2015, her name was legally changed to Caitlyn Marie Jenner and gender to female.

Jenner was also mocked. Beginning in September 2015, she was depicted on the satirical American animated program South Park, which parodied her supporters’ political correctness, as well as her driving record. The Jenner-related episodes were “Stunning and Brave”, “Where My Country Gone?”, “Sponsored Content”, “Truth and Advertising” and “PC Principal Final Justice” from the show’s 19th season.

In August 2015, Jenner won the Social Media Queen award at the Teen Choice Awards. In October 2015, Glamour magazine named her one of its 25 Glamour Women of the Year, calling her a “Trans Champion.” In November 2015, Jenner was listed as one of Entertainment Weekly’s 2015 Entertainers of the Year. In December 2015, she was named Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating Person of 2015. Also in that month, she was listed on Time magazine’s eight-person shortlist for the 2015 Person of the Year, and Bing released its list of the year’s “Most Searched Celebrities”, which Jenner was at the top of, and declared Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover the second in a list of “top celeb moments of 2015.” She was the second most searched for person on Google in 2015. In April 2016, she was listed in the Time 100. In June 2016, Jenner became the first openly transgender person to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The cover and associated story marked the 40th anniversary of her winning the 1976 Summer Olympics decathlon.

Since coming out as a trans woman in 2015, Jenner has been called the most famous openly transgender woman in the world. She is also one of the most recognized LGBT people in the world and arguably the most famous LGBT athlete. Jenner said that her visibility was partly to bring attention to gender dysphoria, violence against trans women, and other transgender issues. She also sought to promote more informed discussion of LGBT issues. She signed with Creative Artists Agency’s speakers department and will collaborate with the CAA Foundation on a philanthropic strategy focusing on LGBT issues. She made a private appearance at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in June 2015, where she spoke with trans youth.

Jenner received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the 2015 ESPY Awards in July 2015. ESPN executive producer Maura Mandt said Jenner was given the award because “she has shown the courage to embrace a truth that had been hidden for years, and to embark on a journey that may not only give comfort to those facing similar circumstances, but can also help to educate people on the challenges that the transgender community faces.” She is the third consecutive openly LGBT person to receive the award following footballer Michael Sam (2014) and anchorwoman Robin Roberts (2013).

Jenner’s gender transition is the subject of I Am Cait, initially an eight-part TV documentary series, which premiered on E! in July 2015 to an audience of 2.7 million viewers. Jenner is an executive producer of the show. The show focuses on Jenner’s transition and how it affects her relationships with her family and friends. The show also explores how Jenner adjusts to what she sees as her job as a role model for the transgender community. In October 2015, the show was renewed for a second season, which premiered on March 6, 2016. The show tied for Outstanding Reality Program at the GLAAD Media Awards in 2016.

In September 2016, Jenner appeared as herself on the Amazon Prime TV series Transparent in a dream sequence during the season three episode “To Sardines and Back”.

In March 2016, Jenner announced that she had been chosen as the face of H&M Sport. Later that year, H&M created a six-minute film featuring Jenner, called Caitlyn Jenner’s Greatest Victories: A Timeline.

In April 2016 during the Republican presidential primaries, Jenner became an exemplar for candidate Donald Trump’s opposition to North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, with Trump saying that Jenner could use any restroom of her choosing at his Trump Tower property. Jenner soon posted a video showing that she had taken Trump up on his offer. She thanked Trump and assured Trump’s adversary Ted Cruz that “nobody got molested”.

In June 2016, Jenner was one of several celebrities depicted using synthetic nude “sleeping” bodies for the video of Kanye West’s song “Famous”. Later that month, an episode of Epic Rap Battles of History was released featuring Jenner, as Bruce (portrayed by Peter Shukoff) and then Caitlyn (portrayed by transgender rapper Jolie “NoShame” Drake), rap battling against Bruce Banner (portrayed by Lloyd Ahlquist) then The Hulk (portrayed by Mike O’Hearn).

In November, Jenner was listed as one of the nine runners-up for The Advocate’s Person of the Year. That month she was also listed as one of the Out100 of 2015, with Out calling her the “Newsmaker of the Year.” On International Human Rights Day, Jenner discussed transgender rights with Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 2016, Jenner was on the cover of The Advocate’s February/March issue.

MAC Cosmetics collaborated with Jenner on a lipstick, called Finally Free, which was made available for purchase April 8, 2016, with MAC stating, “100% of the selling price goes to the MAC AIDS Fund Transgender Initiative, to further its work in support of transgender communities.” Also in April 2016, Jenner was listed as No. 8 on Out magazine’s Power 50 list. In May 2016, her interview with Diane Sawyer in 2015 won Outstanding TV Journalism – Newsmagazine at the GLAAD Media Awards.

In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Jenner and others told the stories of the people killed there.

In July 2016, Jenner spoke about coming out as transgender and Republican at a Republican National Convention “Big Tent Brunch” for the conservative group American Unity Fund.

Jenner is a Christian, leans towards political conservatism, and is a Republican. “I have gotten more flak for being a conservative Republican than I have for being trans,” she has said. Although stopping short of an endorsement, Jenner said she liked Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, despite Cruz’s negative views of trans people. On her reality show I Am Cait, Jenner said that although she does not support Donald Trump, she thinks he would be good for women’s issues; she then stated she would never support Hillary Clinton. She ended up voting for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Jenner’s memoir, The Secrets of My Life, was published on April 25, 2017.

In February 2017, President Trump rescinded federal requirements giving transgender students the right to choose the school restroom matching their gender identity. In response, Jenner tweeted “Well @realDonaldTrump, from one Republican to another, this is a disaster. You made a promise to protect the LGBTQ community. Call me.”

In April 2017, Jenner said she was in favor of same-sex marriage.

In July 2017, Jenner announced that she was contemplating running in the 2018 race for the US Senate to represent California. Later in the month, she condemned Trump for issuing an order to reinstate a ban on transgender people from serving in the military. In her tweet, she wrote “What happened to your promise to fight for them?”, juxtaposing it with Trump’s tweet from June 2016 in which he promised to fight for the LGBT community.

In November 2019, it was announced that Jenner would be participating in the nineteenth season of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!.