Mariah Carey: singer talks about storybook marriage, interracial heritage and sudden fame

Ebony, April, 1994 by Lynn Norment

DESPITE the cool weather, pop star Mariah Carey is in a convivial, outdoorsy mood. At her country retreat in the heart of rural Upstate New York dairy farming, the darling diva, who turned 24 in March, demonstrates her driving skills, first on a utility vehicle and then in a Jeep, with her frisky Jack Russell terrier (Jack) ever at her side. Later, inside the farmhouse near the fireplace, she cuddles with Tompkins, one of her two Persian cats, and offers hot chocolate and buttered popcorn to visitors.

"I've always had pets -- dogs and cats -- my whole life," she says, as she romps with Jack in one of the two main rooms of the colonial-style house. The two-story dwelling sits on a hill overlooking acres of pasture, woodlands, a large pond, a guest lodge and a barn where four horses are kept during the summer. The decor is chic Adirondack with saddles resting on bannisters and arms of chairs. On tables, mantles and shelves are framed photographs of Mariah -- at the beach, astride her palomino Misty, with her husband, Sony Music president Tommy Mottola.

It was Mottola who discovered the talented young singer at a Columbia Records party in 1988. After her six-million-selling debut album hit the airwaves in 1990, the Long Island native, barely out of her teens, became well-known around the world, thanks to an incredible voice that, like a powerful magnet, attracted record buyers as well as media attention. Her four albums have sold more than 16 million copies in the U.S., and she has received Grammy, American Music and Soul Train Music Awards.

The talented singer of interracial parentage also has found happiness on a personal level. Last June she married Mottolla, a wealthy divorce 20 years her senior, in a star-studded, fairy tale wedding. Yet, success and wealth apparently have not spoiled the princess of pop music. Like a little sister or the girl next door, she is still refreshingly sincere and genuinely sweet. In fact, Mariah says she detests abusive, egotistical celebrities and can't imagine turning into such a tyrant. "If I haven't changed by now, I'm not going to change," she says, going further to describe herself as "very independent, very spiritual in my own way," and as a person who worries a lot about whether she has hurt someone else's feelings. "It sometimes hurts me that people may think I'm a bitchy diva," she reveals. "That's not who I am."

You can call her Mariah or Ms. Carey or even Mrs. Mottola, but don't call Mariah Carey an overnight success. "My whole life I'd been working toward this," she says of her meteoric rise to fame. "I grew up without having a lot of things, money and stuff like that. My mother and I moved around a lot; she worked three jobs sometimes. So I really feel that I've been struggling my whole life, and it all just came to a head when I came to the city and tried to support myself. I went through a lot of rough times when I was a little girl."

After her parents divorced when she was 3 years old, Mariah was reared by her Irish-American mother, Patricia Carey, a vocal coach and former opera singer. During her childhood, Mariah only periodically saw her father, Alfred Roy Carey, a Black aeronautical engineer who lives in Washington, D.C., and also has a home on Long Island. Her father's mother is Black, she explains, while his father is Venezuelan. She says the stress of being an interracial couple in the '60s and '70s put exceptional strain on her parents' marriage. Over the years, their dogs were poisoned and cars were set on fire and blown up.

And she appreciates the fact that her father has been "respectful" of her fame and privacy. "He has not come out of the woodwork saying stupid things about me; he has pride and he's not that kind of person," she says. "He's a good person. I don't have anything against him. It's just very difficult growing up in a divorced family -- the tension, anger and bitterness between the parents is often put off on the children, and because I was so young when they divorced, it was really a major split for me."

After the divorce, she says, her older sister, Allison, now 32 and a housewife on Long Island, lived with her father but moved out when she got married at a young age. Her brother, Morgan, now 33 and manager of a rap group, soon went off to college. "I grew up with my mom, and I have more in common with her in terms of music," she says. "That is such a major part of both our lives. My father is more of a cerebral person. He's a great mathematician, an aeronautical engineer, and he's completely opposite of me in terms of what he excels at. I'm horrible at math. We don't have the same interests. So when I would go there, we didn't have that much in common. But I have good memories of doing things with him when I was a little girl."

Mariah says the has dozens of Black relatives. "Everytime I would go there to visit I would really enjoy it," she recalls. "And I wish I had been a part of it more. I loved them when I met them. I'd never experienced a big family like that, because my mother's family basically disowned her when she maRried my father. I was an interracial thing. So I didn't know anybody from that side except my mother and grandmother."