Mariah Carey has been a mainstay of our airwaves for almost four decades, and it wouldn’t be a festive season without her hit song, All I Want For Christmas Is You, on high rotation.
While Carey has a successful career, awards, two beautiful children and plenty of money, the one thing that has escaped her is a lasting relationship.
The twice-married and divorced singer, who was once engaged to Aussie mogul James Packer, is now believed to be single after her most recent long-term relationship ended a year ago.
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Mariah Carey was born in the US state of New York on March 27, 1969.
Her mother Patricia was an opera singer whose family disowned her for marrying Mariah’s dad, an aeronautical engineer, because he was Black.
Patricia first discovered Mariah’s talent while rehearsing at home for a role with the New York City Opera Rigoletto. Her daughter, then two, started singing along.
She became her singing teacher and helped develop Mariah’s famed five-octave vocal range.
By the time Carey was in high school, she was working as a demo singer. She then moved to New York, where she got a job singing back up for Brenda K Starr.
Tommy Mottola
Carey, then just 19, was at a party with Starr when she handed her demo tape to the then head of Columbia Records, Tommy Mottola.
After listening to the tape during the ride home, he immediately asked the driver to turn around, but Carey had already left.
He eventually tracked Carey down and signed her after a bidding war.
Her debut album, Mariah Carey, was released on June 12, 1990, and went to number one in the US, where it stayed for 11 weeks.
It spawned her first hit, Vision of Love, which won her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She also won the Grammy for Best New Artist.
Mottola, who was married with two children at the time he met Carey, divorced his wife and he and Carey began dating, despite a 21-year age difference.
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They married in a lavish ceremony in New York in 1993, with Carey, 23, wearing a $25,000 Vera Wang ruffled dress inspired by Princess Diana’s wedding gown.
But she told Cosmopolitan in 2019 that while things looked picture perfect, they were not.
“You might want to picture a child bride. There was a conscious effort to keep me as this all-American, whatever that means, girl. It was very controlled,” she said.
“There was no freedom for me as a human being. It was almost like being a prisoner.”
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In her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, she said Mottola had an “oppressive” presence during their marriage.
“I couldn’t talk to anyone that wasn’t under Tommy’s control. I couldn’t go out or do anything with anybody. I couldn’t move freely in my own house,” she wrote.
They separated in December 1996 and divorced in March 1998.
Derek Jeter
After their separation, Carey flew headlong into a relationship with then-New York Yankees baseball player Derek Jeter.
She later admitted in her autobiography that things turned physical while she and Mottola were still together.
She revealed they met at a dinner where they bonded over their shared experience of having biracial parents, before the two exchanged phone numbers.
“Derek was only the second person I had slept with ever (coincidentally, his number was two on the Yankees),” she wrote.
Carey wrote that she thought Jeter was her soulmate, and he taught her she “could “have something beautiful on the other side of the hell that was [her] marriage.”
The relationship lasted about a year, and Carey said Jeter was the catalyst “to get out from under Tommy’s crippling control.”
Luis Miguel
Carey met Mexican singer Luis Miguel during a blind date in Aspen, Colorado, in 1998.
They went out to dinner and the next day he sent her a Bulgari necklace.
“I soon learned that was his way; he was an authentic, over-the-top Latin lover for real,” she wrote in her autobiography.
After three years together, the two broke up.
“I tried my best to support him emotionally, but I was going through my own s–t and it got to a point where I could no longer deal with it,” she wrote, adding he at times “had a dark cloud hanging over his head.”
Eric Benét and Christian Monzon
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In the early 2000s, Mariah made her feature film debut in Glitter opposite actor and singer Eric Benét, and the two were rumoured to date between 2000 and 2001.
Her next known relationship was with Christian Monzon, a model who starred in the music video for her 2005 song, Don’t Forget About Us.
The two reportedly dated for about a year.
Nick Cannon
In 2008, Nick Cannon was chosen to star in the music video for Carey’s song, Bye Bye.
The two had crossed paths at the 2005 Teen Choice Awards.
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This time, they embarked on a whirlwind romance that culminated in a wedding just two months later at her home in the Bahamas.
She told People the pair were “soulmates” and she had “never felt a love like this.”
The couple returned to the Bahamas to renew their vows a year later.
In October 2010, it was announced the two were expecting. Twins, son Moroccan and daughter Monroe, arrived on April 30, 2011 – their third wedding anniversary.
By 2014, reports emerged their marriage was on the rocks. Cannon confirmed at the end of that year the two had separated.
Their divorce was finalised in November 2016.
Carey later reflected on the split in her book, writing, “Honestly, I think Nick and I could have worked it out between the two of us, but egos and emotions got inflamed. It was tough.”
James Packer
Carey reportedly met Aussie businessman and media mogul James Packer at a movie premiere in 2015 and they stepped out holding hands that June.
By September, the two were pictured on the red carpet at a movie premiere.
Parker reportedly popped the question in January 2016 with a 35-carat diamond ring she joked was “so heavy I can’t lift my arm up.”
But by October that year, it was over, with People confirming the two had ended their engagement and split.
Packer later told The Australian the relationship came “at a low point in my personal life” and was a “mistake for her and a mistake for me.”
In 2020, Carey said she left him out of her book because the relationship didn’t matter enough to be included.
“We didn’t have a physical relationship, to be honest with you,” she revealed.
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Bryan Tanaka
Carey quickly moved on with her backup dancer-turned-creative director, Bryan Tanaka, who was 14 years her junior.
Packer had reportedly been concerned about Carey’s relationship with Tanaka, who had worked with her since 2006.
After they split, the two were pictured kissing in Hawaii.
By the start of 2017, they were Instagram official and spent that Christmas together.
The two had an on-off relationship before eventually calling it quits for good in December 2023, with Tanaka announcing the news.
Carey, now 55, is not thought to be dating anyone.
She has a net worth of about $500 million, and makes about $4 million every year just from royalties from her Christmas songs.
She lives with her children, now 13, in a New York penthouse.
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