Mariah Carey: Snapshot
- Name
- Mariah Carey
- Birth Date
- 03/27/1969
- Birth Place
- Huntington, N.Y.
Carey's love life was just as volatile. At 19, she met Sony Music mogul Tommy Mottola, who signed her with Columbia Records, making her a star at 21 and his wife at 24. The marriage ended four years later, but Carey continued to record with Columbia until signing a reported $80 million, four-album deal with Virgin Records in 2001.
The pop diva's 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi became the year's best-selling album and earned her three more Grammys. In 2008, she upped the ante when she surprisingly married actor Nick Cannon and beat Elvis Presley with her eighteenth No. 1 single, "Touch My Body," off her sixth No. 1 album, E=MC2.
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Mariah Carey: Five Fun Facts
- Not yet 3 years old, Mariah Carey overheard her opera singer mom rehearsing Verdi's Rigoletto and replicated it herself. "I missed my cue, but Mariah didn't," says Patricia Carey. "She sang it – in Italian – at exactly the right point."
- During a skirmish on the set of Wise Girls, Mariah Carey threw a saltshaker at costar Mira Sorvino, who then wrestled Carey to the floor.
- "One lady told me that her daughter was playing ''Someday'' and the high note that comes on at the end made her garage door keep opening and closing," Mariah Carey told PEOPLE in 1992.
- Mariah Carey was named after the song "They Called the Wind Mariah," from the 1969 movie musical Paint Your Wagon.
- Mariah Carey bought Marilyn Monroe's childhood piano for more than $600,000 at an auction. "I had to fight for it...That piano is a symbolic thing," she tells Playboy. "In Marilyn's autobiography there is a chapter called ''How I Rescued a White Piano.'' It was the only thing she had from her childhood."
Mariah Carey: Biography 
- 1988
Discovery Channel
Just 10 months after graduating from high school, aspiring singer Carey, then working as a coat-checker/waitress in Manhattan, meets Sony Music mogul Tommy Mottola at a Columbia Records party. Mottola snatches her demo tape from another music scout and, after listening to it on his drive home, decides to track Carey down.
- 1990
Vision of Success
Carey knocks it out of the park with her self-titled debut album, which stays atop the Billboard albums chart for several weeks based on the strength of its four No. 1 singles. She wins two Grammys the following February – Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her debut single "Vision of Love."
- 1993
Marrying the Boss
Mottola makes her a star and she makes him her husband. Their lavish New York City wedding is attended by Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen and Robert De Niro, who serves as an usher. Carey wears a Vera Wang gown with a 27-foot train that requires six women to lift it. With 200 security personnel, 300 guests and a wedding party that included 47 flower girls, the final tab for the shindig comes to almost $500,000.
Photo Credits
Top Left: MR Photo/Corbis Outline
BIOGRAPHY (top to bottom): CLASSMATES YEARBOOK ARCHIVES; Bill Swersey/Liason; REUTERS/Landov/Corbis
