Kendra Wilkinson

Kendra Leigh Baskett (née Wilkinson; born June 12, 1985) is an American television personality, businesswoman, glamour model and author. She is widely known for being one of Hugh Hefner's three girlfriends and for her role on the E! reality television series The Girls Next Door, on which her life in the Playboy Mansion was documented. Although not a Playboy Playmate, she has appeared in three nude pictorials with her Girls Next Door costars and fellow Hefner girlfriends Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt. Her own reality series, Kendra, debuted in June 2009. --- Kendra Wilkinson is of Irish, Ukrainian, and English descent. She is the elder of two children; her younger brother is Colin. Her mother, Patti, was originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and had been a cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles. Her father, Eric, was raised in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and Ocean City, New Jersey, before moving to San Diego, California at age 15. He received a degree in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and went on to found several biotechnology companies before retiring at the age of 48. Patti and Eric married on November 5, 1983. They divorced on March 25, 1994, when Kendra was eight. Her grandmother Gloria Wilkinson died in December 2004. Kendra Wilkinson was born in San Diego and raised in its middle class community Clairemont. She played softball for six years with the Clairemont Bobby Sox. She attended Clairemont High School, graduating in 2003. When she left high school she began working as a glamour model, and also briefly worked as an administrative assistant in a dentist's office. --- Wilkinson met Hugh Hefner at his 78th birthday party in April 2004, where she was hired to be one of the "painted girls" (women who are nude except for painted-on accessories). Hefner had apparently seen her picture, shot by photographer Kim Riley, on a fax machine at the Playboy Mansion and wanted to know who she was. Shortly after they met, Hefner asked Wilkinson to be one of his girlfriends, and he moved her into the Playboy Mansion along with her dogs Rascal (a Pembroke Welsh Corgi) and Martini (a Jack Russell Terrier). She was featured on the E! reality television series The Girls Next Door, which followed the lives of Hefner's then-girlfriends: Wilkinson, Holly Madison, and Bridget Marquardt. She moved out of the Playboy Mansion in 2009 after meeting her future husband, Hank Baskett, and filmed her own spin-off reality show for E! called Kendra. The first season was about her living on her own and planning her wedding. --- On September 22, 2008, the International Business Times reported that Wilkinson was engaged to Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Hank Baskett. Wilkinson initially denied this, but she later admitted she was in a relationship with Baskett on October 7, 2008 in an interview with Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately. On November 6, 2008, E! Online announced Wilkinson and Baskett were engaged, after he proposed the previous Saturday at the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington. Wilkinson married Baskett on June 27, 2009, at the Playboy Mansion. Although it was initially announced that Hugh Hefner would give the bride away, Kendra's brother Colin walked her down the aisle. Wilkinson's family was in attendance, as well as former Girls Next Doorstars Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt. Us Weekly paid the couple $120,000 for the wedding pictures. On the wedding episode of Kendra, Kendra and Hank said that Kendra would be taking Hank's last name. On June 11, 2009, Wilkinson announced that she and Baskett were expecting their first baby together. The baby, a boy named Hank Baskett IV, was born December 11, 2009 at 12:37 a.m. in Carmel, Indiana, by Caesarian section, weighing in at 9 pounds 5 ounces (4.2 kg). Kendra's friends hosted a baby shower on September 9, 2009.